Description
To hold ADA and other tokens on the Cardano blockchain, you need a “crypto wallet”. To understand what a crypto wallet is, let’s use an email account as an analogy.
- Each email account has an email address. You can share this with anyone so they can send you emails. Similarly, each crypto wallet has a receive address which is public.
- Every email account has a password. The password must be kept secret so that only you can access your email account. Similarly, each crypto wallet has a spending password which you can use to control the funds of your Cardano wallet.
- Each email account has a method to help you recover your account in case you forget your password by pressing “forgot password”. Crypto wallets are different in this case. Instead, of “forgot password”, you need to use recovery phrases to regain access to your funds, in case you lose your spending password.
To receive and send ADA or other tokens on the Cardano blockchain, you need a Cardano wallet.
Types of wallets
As with email accounts, there are many User Interfaces that help you set it up and use your wallet. For example, you can use gmail inside your iPhone Mail or through your browser. Similarly, you can access your Cardano crypto wallet using several different apps with different user interfaces! Each app connect to the same Cardano blockchain in the background.
Here are some of the wallets we recommend. For the first two, we have made guides:
These two do not have guides but are good alternatives
You can easily move between these different apps by “recovering” your Cardano wallet in each of these different user interfaces.
Steps to create a Cardano wallet (browser)
- The instructions are very detailed and you may not need this assistance. I wrote it all out just to help you feel more assured as you create your first wallet.