Blockchain ‘wallets’ are generally just pairs of public and private keys with some UI wrapped around them.1 We take the private key, and use it to derive the public key, which we then use to derive the wallet’s address. What’s important is that the process of derivation is very difficult to reverse, in the same way that a hashing function is difficult to reverse: the chance of you guessing the private key correctly at random is about the same as selecting one atom from all the atoms in the universe – and there’s no better way than guessing at random.
HD wallets and network switching
HD wallets and network switching
HD wallets and network switching
Blockchain ‘wallets’ are generally just pairs of public and private keys with some UI wrapped around them.1 We take the private key, and use it to derive the public key, which we then use to derive the wallet’s address. What’s important is that the process of derivation is very difficult to reverse, in the same way that a hashing function is difficult to reverse: the chance of you guessing the private key correctly at random is about the same as selecting one atom from all the atoms in the universe – and there’s no better way than guessing at random.