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Glossary Term

Public Key

The shareable half of a cryptographic key pair, from which your wallet address is derived — safe to publish.

A public key is the openly-shareable counterpart to your private key. Through one-way cryptography, the private key generates the public key, and the public key generates your address — but the process can’t be reversed, so publishing your address or public key never endangers your funds.

This asymmetry is the foundation of crypto security: you prove ownership by signing with the private key, and anyone can verify the signature using the public key, without the private key ever being revealed. Understanding the one-way chain (private key → public key → address) clarifies why sharing an address to receive funds is completely safe while sharing a private key or seed phrase is catastrophic.

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