Mnemonic & wallet best practices

The 12 or 24 words are the seed from which every key on every chain is derived. Whoever has them controls the wallet. There is no reset, no recovery, no support agent who can help — the chain only knows the math.

Treat it accordingly: physical safekeeping, not digital convenience.

Hand-written on paper, stored in a safe / fireproof box. Two copies in different physical locations.

Metal seed plate (titanium, steel) for fire/water resistance. Sold by Cryptosteel, Billfodl, ColdCard, etc.

Hardware wallet (Ledger, Trezor, ColdCard). The seed lives in the device's secure element; you don't usually need to write it down again unless setting up a new device.

A screenshot. Phones sync screenshots to iCloud/Google Photos by default — that puts your seed in someone else's cloud.

A text file on your computer. Malware (infostealers) scan for files matching seed-phrase patterns. They look like 'seed.txt', 'wallet.txt', etc.

A cloud notes app (Notes, Evernote, Google Keep). Cloud breaches happen. Your most sensitive info should not depend on a company's security posture.

Email to yourself. Email is forever, and stored on a server you don't control. Don't.

When typing your seed into Keplr or a hardware wallet, verify the URL or the device prompt FIRST. Phishing sites mimic Keplr's onboarding flow exactly.

Never share the seed with anyone, including 'support'. Genuine support never asks for it.

Have a recovery test: at setup time, after writing the seed, restore it on a different fresh wallet to confirm you wrote it correctly. Do this BEFORE depositing real funds.