GlossaryAdvanced
Hierarchical Deterministic Wallet
A wallet that generates many key pairs from a single seed, following a standard derivation structure.
A hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet generates an entire tree of key pairs from a single starting seed, following a standardized derivation structure, so every address it ever produces can be recreated from that one seed backup.
This is why a single seed phrase is generally sufficient to back up and restore an entire modern wallet, including many separate addresses, rather than needing to back up each private key individually.
Examples
- Most modern crypto wallets are HD wallets, generating many addresses from one seed phrase.
- Restoring an HD wallet from its seed phrase recreates its entire structure of addresses.