Keys and secrets

Your XRPL account is controlled by a pair of keys.

• The public key proves your signatures are real. Your address comes from it. Share the address freely.
• The private key makes signatures. A signature is how you approve a transaction.

Both keys come from one secret. Wallet apps show the secret in different formats:

• A family seed: a short string of letters and numbers.
• A mnemonic: a list of words.
• Secret Numbers: eight blocks of six digits, used by Xaman.

The format does not matter. Whoever knows the secret controls the account. They can use it in any compatible wallet, on any device.

Rules that follow from this:

• Write the secret on paper. Keep it offline.
• Never type it into a website, a form or a chat.
• No real support team ever needs it. Anyone who asks for it is trying to steal from you.
• The app passcode protects your phone. It does not protect a secret someone else already has.

With self-custody there is no reset button. Lose the secret and the phone, and the account is gone for good. Leak the secret, and someone else can empty the account. XRPL transactions cannot be reversed.

Key pairs. The XRPL supports two signing schemes: secp256k1, the default and the same scheme Bitcoin uses, and Ed25519. The public key is in each signed transaction so servers can verify the signature. It cannot create signatures.

Seeds. A seed is a compact value from which the private and public keys are derived. xrpl.org: anyone who knows an address's seed has effectively full control over that address. A seed can be derived from a passphrase, but that is less secure than a fully random seed.

Secret Numbers (XLS-12, status Final). Designed to replace family seeds and mnemonics with digits that are easier to write down and read back.

• 8 blocks of 6 digits, often labeled A to H.
• The first five digits of a block are a number from 0 to 65535: one 16-bit chunk of entropy.
• The sixth digit is a checksum: value × (position × 2 + 1) mod 9, with position 0 to 7.
• A block typed in the wrong position fails its checksum.

Secret Numbers can always be converted to a family seed for wallets that do not support them.

Master key. The key pair derived from the account's original secret is its master key pair. It cannot be changed or removed, only disabled. See Regular keys and multi-signing.

Test a backup without risk. Xaman suggests starting the account import with the paper secret, checking that the r-address matches, then backing out before confirming.