Private keys

[Cruxleo]

One of my friends said he understands that If you give away your private keys to someone, they can basically be used to drain your wallet of all its holdings. Which makes private keys so much so private and should always be stored securely and never shared. But something is not so clear about this keys as in the statement below:

"for Non-custodial wallets, it is required you to store your private keys, as it gives you sole responsibility over sensitive data."

First, are private keys for Non-custodial wallets to be looked out for and stored/saved just like the seed phrases? And

Secondly, what other times would a wallet owner need to personally use the private keys aside from its primary automated role of authorize transactions?

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[OmegaStarScream]

1. Only if the wallet doesn't give you access to your seed phrase, and only to your PKs. The private keys are derived from the seed phrase so if you save that, you automatically have access to your private keys.

2. Private keys = control over your address/funds meaning without them, you can't sign a message (prove ownership of an address) or send funds.

[Coin_trader]

First, are private keys for Non-custodial wallets to be looked out for and stored/saved just like the seed phrases? And

Private key and Seed phrase is just the same use they just vary on the format. As the word already implies, It’s the only key to access your wallet so you should save it or else your funds can’t be recovered or in event someone have access then your funds loss

Secondly, what other times would a wallet owner need to personally use the private keys aside from its primary automated role of authorize transactions?

You only need to use it to unlock/access your wallet then signing transactions is automated once you already imported the key to the wallet. You only need to import your keys once to access your wallet and send transactions. You only need to do that if you sign out or import on different non custodial wallet.

[Charles-Tim]

From the seed phrase, the seed is generated. From the seed, the master private key is generated. From the master private key, the child private keys (which you are referring to) are generated. From the child private keys the corresponding addresses are generated.

You can read this to understand more: https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook/blob/develop/ch05.asciidoc.

If you have your seed phrase, you do not need to bother because you have your private key as your seed phrase can always generate your private keys.

Private key and Seed phrase is just the same use they just vary on the format.

Seed phrase generate the private keys, but the private keys are used for the digital signature that is necessary for transaction. Although, both can be used to recover your coins.

For backup, in this HD wallet time, use seed phrase which is all that is needed.

[Cookdata]

One of my friends said he understands that If you give away your private keys to someone, they can basically be used to drain your wallet of all its holdings. Which makes private keys so much so private and should always be stored securely and never shared. But something is not so clear about this keys as in the statement below:

"for Non-custodial wallets, it is required you to store your private keys, as it gives you sole responsibility over sensitive data."

First, are private keys for Non-custodial wallets to be looked out for and stored/saved just like the seed phrases? And

Secondly, what other times would a wallet owner need to personally use the private keys aside from its primary automated role of authorize transactions?

With your seed phrase ( either the 12 words or 24 words), you can easily manage plenty of private keys but in a situation where you have your fund stuck in a single private key, you have to back it up and keep it safe just the way you will handle your seed phrase, your main priority is to avoid bad actors from getting access to them.

Other than authorizing a transaction with your private keys, you can sign a message with a private key to prove ownership of a wallet address, For instance, if you are very active in this forum, it can bail you out if your account becomes hacked or when someone changes email and password of your forum account. If you have not staked your wallet address in the forum, please do so here

[Charles-Tim]

With your seed phrase ( either the 12 words or 24 words)

Seed phrase can be 12, 15, 18, 21 or 24 words long.

[Hatchy]

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Both the private keys and the seed phrase must be kept secret and safe from theft. Without them, you can't prove ownership of the funds in your wallet  and you won't have control over them. There are other use case of the private keys, that is for example. If you lose your device you can use the private keys to restore your wallet on a new device and regain access to your funds. Similarly, if you switch to a different wallet provider you'll need the private keys to import your wallet and use the new service.

You just have to remember that your funds are not stored in the wallet itself but are recorded on the Blockchain. The wallet only displays the amount of funds associated with that address.

[EL MOHA]

I get some of your explanations up but my question is, the 24 words long is that the highest that can a seed phrase is to have. Because I read that seed phrases although are produce by the wallets but they also can be customized by the user (although senior members warn against it because of lack of randomness). Can one not customize a seed with longer words say 48 just to have a much more bigger bits of entropy I.e larger than the 256 for 24 words

Seed phrase can be 12, 15, 18, 21 or 24 words long.

[Charles-Tim]

Can one not customize a seed with longer words say 48 just to have a much more bigger bits of entropy I.e larger than the 256 for 24 words

This is a quote from BIP39:

The mnemonic must encode entropy in a multiple of 32 bits. With more entropy security is improved but the sentence length increases. We refer to the initial entropy length as ENT. The allowed size of ENT is 128-256 bits.

Even the 24 words seed phrases with 256 bits of entropy have 128 bits of security just like the 12 words seed phrases.

[Cruxleo]

I get some of your explanations up but my question is, the 24 words long is that the highest that can a seed phrase is to have. Because I read that seed phrases although are produce by the wallets but they also can be customized by the user (although senior members warn against it because of lack of randomness). Can one not customize a seed with longer words say 48 just to have a much more bigger bits of entropy I.e larger than the 256 for 24 words

The seed phrases cannot be more than 24 however, trying to customize even with more than 24 words and up to 48 as you suggested or more won't lead to security enhancement of which is primary to the concept of seed phrases because you cannot be more random and secured than the traditional BIP39 standard seed phrases, even as it comprises of a list of 2048 words.

[Dunamisx]

With your seed phrase ( either the 12 words or 24 words)

Seed phrase can be 12, 15, 18, 21 or 24 words long.

Interestingly, learning indeed never ends, this will lead to the question I will like to ask more on the subject matter quoted.

I just got to discover this today that some seed phrase could actually be 15, 18 or 21 aside the common ones which are 12 and 24

It keep pondering on my mind in asking why are some seed phrase being generated on different number range and why is 12 and 24 the most common numbers of seed phrase.

[Faisal2202]

"for Non-custodial wallets, it is required you to store your private keys, as it gives you sole responsibility over sensitive data."

First, are private keys for Non-custodial wallets to be looked out for and stored/saved just like the seed phrases?

Yes private keys are as important as seed phrase. Because one with private keys coyld easily get access to your wallet account for example, i have a scenario for you. When we make metamask wallet as extension on chrome or any browser. We then asked for password to log in but if we have forgot the password we are asked for private keys to login to wallet (to recover the wallet) if you don't have the private key then you have to uninstall the wallet and then during creation you have to select the import option and then put the seed phrase or you will see another option of recover from private keys.

So, i hope you know might understand the importance of private keys.

Secondly, what other times would a wallet owner need to personally use the private keys aside from its primary automated role of authorize transactions?

I have already answered this query in the last answer but instead of recovering accounts private keys are used to authorize each activity on your wallet like making swap, transaction etc. But that depends on the wallet you are using as not every wallet will ask for Private keys as another wallet might be asking.

[Upgrade00]

It keep pondering on my mind in asking why are some seed phrase being generated on different number range and why is 12 and 24 the most common numbers of seed phrase.

12 is actually the most common. 128 bits of of entropy is sufficient security to protect against any sort of breach, so most wallets use a 12 word seedphrase above all the other options.

24 words being used by sone might be to give the perception of a higher level of security to encourage more people to use their wallets.

[Timmzzy]

One of my friends said he understands that If you give away your private keys to someone, they can basically be used to drain your wallet of all its holdings. Which makes private keys so much so private and should always be stored securely and never shared. But something is not so clear about this keys as in the statement below:

"for Non-custodial wallets, it is required you to store your private keys, as it gives you sole responsibility over sensitive data."

First, are private keys for Non-custodial wallets to be looked out for and stored/saved just like the seed phrases? And

Secondly, what other times would a wallet owner need to personally use the private keys aside from its primary automated role of authorize transactions?

This private key has really helped me alot to recover all my savings i could remember 2018 when i was using IMTOKEN WALLET till date my phone got bad to a point it refused to boot and what saved me was i wrote it down in my dairy. take note guys dont store your PK on you mobile phone and if its to be stored make sure you encrypt the DOC.

[EL MOHA]

Just as Upgrade00 pointed out. The security is actually on the number bits of entropy produced and the best is that which is between 128 bits and 256bits. A words less than 12 will certainly generate a lower entropy which will weaken the strength of guessing them.

 The 12 words I think (based on what I read on the forum here) produces the same number of bits as a private key (128) which in terms of security doesn’t matters how many bits of entropy is generated, since the level of the private key security is 128 bits. That is why most wallet stick to the 12 words.

Read on here for more details on seed generation https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/mnemonic#bip39-wordlist

It keep pondering on my mind in asking why are some seed phrase being generated on different number range and why is 12 and 24 the most common numbers of seed phrase.

[nakamura12]

1. Only if the wallet doesn't give you access to your seed phrase, and only to your PKs. The private keys are derived from the seed phrase so if you save that, you automatically have access to your private keys.

2. Private keys = control over your address/funds meaning without them, you can't sign a message (prove ownership of an address) or send funds.

Additional to this explanation. As above post explained that the private key is derived from the seed phrase. It is actually true that the private key is derived from the seed phrase which means that you can use your seed phrase to extract the private key of any wallet address if the wallet provider you are using have different wallet address like receiving address, change address and more if ever you want to extract a private key (let's call it that way) because honestly, I tried it myself.

Anyways, custodial wallets are different since when you create a wallet in there then you won't get to know the private key or seed phrase.