Set up a wallet before you buy
The name lives in your wallet, so the wallet is the thing to get right first. Five steps, about fifteen minutes, nothing technical.
The name lives in your wallet, so the wallet is the thing to get right first. Five steps, about fifteen minutes, nothing technical.
A Web3 name is minted to a wallet address and stays there. That is what makes it yours, and it is also what makes the wallet the single point of failure. Everything on this page is about getting the wallet right before anything valuable is in it, because the one mistake here that cannot be fixed later is losing access to it.
None of it is technical. It takes about fifteen minutes, most of which is writing twelve or twenty-four words on paper and checking them.
Choose a wallet where you, not a company, hold the recovery phrase. Browser-extension and mobile wallets are the usual starting point. Before installing, check that the provider of the ending you want lists that wallet as supported — not every wallet displays every naming system.
Go to the wallet maker’s own site or the official app store listing, not a link from a search ad, a message or a video description. Fake wallet apps with near-identical names are the most common way people lose everything before they start.
During setup the wallet shows a list of words in a fixed order. Write them down by hand, numbered, on paper. Not a photo, not a note on the phone, not an email to yourself, not a password manager you have not already made secure. Make a second copy and keep it in a different place.
Check every word against the screen, including spelling. If the wallet offers a verification step, do it. Some people also restore the wallet on a second device from the paper copy, then delete it from that device — it proves the backup works.
Consider a wallet used only for names and nothing else — no trading, no connecting to unfamiliar sites. A name sits there for years. A wallet that signs a lot of transactions is exposed to a lot more risk than it needs to be.
Two locations, both offline, both findable by you in three years.
Typed the address yourself or used the store listing linked from the maker’s site.
Checked the provider’s own list for the ending you are buying under.
If the name matters to a business or a family, one other person should know where the paper is — not what it says.
No provider, wallet or support desk needs your recovery phrase to register, transfer or fix a name. Any page or message asking for it is theft in progress, however official it looks. The only place the phrase is ever typed is into the wallet itself, when restoring it.
Yes. The name is minted to a wallet address, so the wallet has to exist first. Some providers let you create one during checkout, but setting it up beforehand gives you time to back it up properly.
Usually not for this. An account on an exchange is held by the exchange, not by you, and names are minted to addresses you control. Use a self-custody wallet where you hold the recovery phrase.
Not for a first name. It is worth considering once a wallet holds names that matter to a business, because it keeps the keys off the computer you browse with.
If the device still works, nothing yet — write a new backup immediately. If the device is also lost, the wallet and every name in it are gone. No provider, wallet maker or catalogue can restore them.
Once the wallet is ready, the next thing worth knowing is how people lose names they already own.