Recovery phrase and ledger nano s help?

[DrBitcoin]

I got a ledger nano s, and out ehthereum, bitcoin, Ethereum Classic, Bitcoin Cash, litecoin on there.

What I do not understand, is how can that 24 word recovery phrase restore all those private keys in the event that I lose my ledger. I understand that it is math, but can someone explain this in simple terms. So many different wallets, coins and private keys...and 24 words somehow backs them all up? It feels like magic.

I would love to understand how it works.

[1715197125]

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[Lauda]

Read BIP44: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0044.mediawiki.

We define the following 5 levels in BIP32 path:

m / purpose' / coin_type' / account' / change / address_index

Coin type

One master node (seed) can be used for unlimited number of independent cryptocoins such as Bitcoin, Litecoin or Namecoin. However, sharing the same space for various cryptocoins has some disadvantages.
This level creates a separate subtree for every cryptocoin, avoiding reusing addresses across cryptocoins and improving privacy issues.
Coin type is a constant, set for each cryptocoin. Cryptocoin developers may ask for registering unused number for their project.
The list of already allocated coin types is in the chapter "Registered coin types" below.
Hardened derivation is used at this level.

For the exact implementation of the Nano S you should take a look at the Ledger documentation.