Derivation Paths: A Reference

Entry last verified June 2026.

The structure

A recovery phrase generates a master key. Child keys are derived along a path with five components: purpose, coin type, account, change and index.

Different wallets use different defaults for those components. The same phrase therefore produces different addresses in different software, and both are correct.

The common purposes

Purpose value	Address type
44	Legacy addresses
49	Nested segwit
84	Native segwit
86	Taproot

The coin type component separates networks, which is how one phrase backs up holdings across many chains.

The recovery failure this causes

Restoring a phrase in a wallet using a different default path produces valid addresses with no balance.

Nothing is lost. The wallet is deriving different children from the same parent. Selecting the correct path, or restoring in the original wallet, produces the expected addresses.

This is the second most common cause of an apparently empty restore, after a forgotten passphrase.

The passphrase

An optional additional word combined with the phrase before key derivation.

With a passphrase, the same words produce an entirely different wallet. Without recording that one exists, a restore produces an empty wallet and no indication why.

A forgotten passphrase is unrecoverable: no checksum, no length constraint, nothing to search.

What to record alongside the phrase

Item	Why
Wallet application used	Determines the default path
Derivation path, if non-standard	Removes the guesswork
Whether a passphrase exists	Turns an impossible recovery into a difficult one
First receiving address of each account	Lets you verify a restore instantly

None of these are secrets. All can be stored in a document kept normally, which is what makes the practice sustainable.

The test

Wipe the device, restore from the written phrase, confirm the first address matches what you recorded.

Ten minutes, and it catches transcription errors, path mismatches and missing passphrases while all three are still fixable.

Repeat annually, because paper fades and memories of configuration details do not survive.

For the portion held at a venue

None of this applies. Recovery there is an identity-verification process, which is a completely different failure model.

That difference is the argument for holding across both, and platforms publishing their recovery process, such as a regulated European platform, make it possible to know what that process actually involves before you need it.