What's the difference between a wallet, an account, and an address?
- A wallet is a container for your accounts and assets, derived from a source of keys like your SRP.
- An account is a collection of addresses from different networks within a wallet.
- An address is the public identifier you use to send and receive tokens on a specific network.
What is a client?
A client is a piece of software that allows you to manage your wallets or SRPs. It runs on your computer or mobile device and allows you to interact with the blockchain.
MetaMask is a client. Think of it as a tool for proving your identity in web3. It is a way of signing transactions and messages to demonstrate that you are the holder of your wallet(s).
What is a wallet?
A wallet, in MetaMask, is a cluster of accounts governed by a source of keys: an SRP, an imported private key, or a snap. If you have multiple SRPs in your MetaMask, you have multiple wallets.
1 SRP = 1 wallet.
What is an account?
An account is where you manage assets across different networks. Accounts in MetaMask are multichain by default, meaning they hold multiple addresses from chains like Ethereum and Solana. Learn more about multichain accounts here.
What is an address?
An address is a unique identifier on a network, derived from a public-private key pair. Your "address" is the public side of your key pair. Ethereum addresses all begin with 0x.