BIP39 is a standard used in most cryptocurrency wallets to help people keep their transactions secure. It stands for “Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 39,” and it defines a set of easy-to-remember words that represent a complete seed phrase that can be used to generate private keys and addresses.
When first creating a cryptocurrency wallet, a generated seed phrase should be written down on paper, stored in a secure location, and never shared with anyone. It is important that the person creating the wallet keeps the seed phrase safe because it can be used to generate private keys and access the wallet if the person forgets their credentials.
In order for the seed phrase to be secure, it should use words from a wordlist provided by BIP39. This wordlist has 2048 entries and is designed to ensure that the seed phrase has enough entropy (randomness) to keep it from being guessed or cracked by brute force.
Adding extra words to the seed phrase increases its entropy and helps make it more secure. The seed phrase created using BIP39 has another benefit: it allows users to use their recovery phrase to move to a different type of wallet or platform. This means that you don’t need to backup your wallet every time you switch wallets; instead, you can simply use the same recovery phrase across multiple wallets.
This makes it easier for people to manage multiple wallets without needing to worry about backing up their data multiple times.