Skip to content
Blockchain Glossary

Glossary

HD Wallet

A "hierarchical deterministic" wallet (BIP-32) that derives a tree of keys from a single seed, so one seed phrase backs up an entire wallet.

Before BIP-32, every key in a wallet was an independent random number, and backing up the wallet meant backing up every key individually. HD wallets fix this: from a single master seed, the wallet deterministically derives a tree of child keys (BIP-32), organized by purpose, coin, account, and index (BIP-44).

The seed itself is encoded as a 12- or 24-word mnemonic phrase (BIP-39). One backup, regenerated on demand into any compatible wallet, restores every key, address, and history.