03
About a minute.
Last time:one shared machine.
Wallets are keys, not vaults
A wallet does not hold coins. It holds the key that proves an address is yours.
Try it
Maya’s teaching wallet. Fake words, fake ETH — the rule is real.
- 1maple
- 2river
- 3quiet
- 4amber
- 5forge
- 6linen
- 7orbit
- 8cedar
- 9pulse
- 10harbor
- 11flint
- 12meadow
0xa1d9703c64bb00774bb19a84bb32d14ba82824ba
1.40 ETH
Press it. People remember the empty bag more than the warning.
On Ethereum, “your money” is a number written next to an address on the public ledger. An address looks like 0x followed by 40 hex characters. Anyone can see the balance. Only the person with the matching private key can move it.
A wallet — an app like Rainbow, a hardware stick, a browser extension — is a tool for keeping that key and signing messages with it. It is closer to a pen than to a bank. The ledger does not know your name. It knows the signature.
Most wallets also give you a seed phrase: 12 or 24 ordinary words. Those words can rebuild the key. Anyone who has them can empty the address. No help desk can reverse that. Write the words on paper, store them offline, and never type them into a website that asked nicely.
If you lose the key and the words, the ETH is still on the ledger — sitting at an address nobody can unlock. That is the trade: no company can freeze you, and no company can save you.
Takeaway
Control of a key is ownership. Lose the key, lose the funds. Share the seed phrase, share the funds.