Wallets

The word “wallet” is used to describe a few different things in Ethereum.

At a high level, a wallet is a software application that serves as the primary user interface to Ethereum. The wallet controls access to a user’s money, managing keys and addresses, tracking the balance, and creating and signing transactions. In addition, some Ethereum wallets can also interact with contracts, such as ERC20 tokens.

More narrowly, from a programmer’s perspective, the word wallet refers to the system used to store and manage a user’s keys. Every wallet has a key-management component. For some wallets, that’s all there is. Other wallets are part of a much broader category, that of browsers, which are interfaces to Ethereum-based decentralized applications, or DApps, which we will examine in more detail in [decentralized_applications_chap]. There are no clear lines of distinction between the various categories that are conflated under the term wallet.

In this chapter we will look at wallets as containers for private keys, and as systems for managing these keys.