<aside> 📎 Still needs some basic grammar touch up and structured approach. Feedbacks are appreciated.
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Wallets are pieces of software and systems that helps you to interact with the blockchain by storing public and private keys.
The concept of public keys and private keys can we confusing but let’s try to make it easier. We can think of public keys as bank account number where anyone can identify one’s bank account and receive funds through that account number. Just like public keys, we can consider private keys, as the password of that bank account. We will need the password to send funds, to spend funds and to initiate any transactions.
So, the public key is your digital identity on the blockchain which you can share with your friends and coworkers to pay you. And private key is the password which you use to stamp any transaction on the blockchain while sending or spending the money.
The cryptocurrency wallet stores both the public and the private keys. You can share your public keys with anyone but you should never share your private keys.
In crypto world, you need to understand the concept of ownership. If someone has access to your private keys, that can be considered as your account compromised. Because you have to trust that person not to move your funds and you will never know where your money disappears to.
But if only you have access to your private keys that means that is solely owned by you.
The two most common wallets that are used to send money by making sure you are the only one with the ownership are metamask(varies on the blockchain also, for example we use Phantom for Solana wallet) and ledger.
For our lessons, we will mostly use browser wallets(metamask). Remember, not to share your private keys with anyone. Sometimes we register name services like ENS for our wallet address or public keys as it’s much easier than remembering whole wallet address or public key. But that’s a discussion for another day.