gm gm

The first thing a newbie in the crypto space should know is, how his or her wallet address is being generated, from the private key to the wallet address.

PUBLIC KEY, PRIVATE KEY, WALLET ADDRESS

You want to know what the 0xa536...  means, this thread is for you.

-the first step is to look for a secure source of entropy or randomness if English is hard for you,  to generate a 128 bits or 256 bits value.

-your software wallet has abstracted everything for you, there is an algorithm behind it that generates a 128 bits or 256 bits value

-this value will be your private key and the possibility of generating the same random number is practically impossible because the wide range of numbers is astronomically large

-so where does your mnemonic phrase come in?

-this private key is made up of a series of long alphanumeric numbers, not human-readable.

-To make it human-readable, this private key would be converted to words(phrases) like, goat, cheese, come, etcs.

-The process of converting the private key to mnemonic phrase is quite long but simple but I am not going to go into the full details

So where does your public key come in?

PUBLIC KEY 🔐
-The public key is also generated from the private key by using a mathematical algorithm called ECDSA(if you are cracked , you might want to check how the ECDSA algorithm works under the hood).

-ECDSA means Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm.

-With simpler explanation, the ECDSA uses a formula to calculate the public key from the private key using the formula

                     K = k * G
Where K is the public key
Where G is the Generator point

-Note: you can get the public key from the private key , it's a one-way function, it's not your normal mathematical division and multiplication.

-So to get the Wallet Address that you see in your metamask everytime you check if your money is dipping or not or whenever you want to buy the dip, this is how it's being generated

-The Wallet Address is being generated from the Public key through hashing algorithm.

-Hashing is a way of hiding something from the outside world, like an encryption.

-So the public key is then hashed using the keccak-256 hashing algorithm to hash the public key , the result of the hashing is gotten and the last 20 bytes is extracted to form your wallet address which is 40 hexadecimal characters

-When you add 0x to the address, you will see something like this 0x2bce25.........9a.

-So this is how your keys are generated using a top-down approach from your private key to your mnemonic phrase to your public key then to your wallet address.

Now you are no more a newbie, you are already an oldtaker with this info.

Anyways Safety Precautions
-Don't expose your private key 🔐 keep it private.
-Don't store your seed phrase in a less secure environment.
-you can expose your public keys and your wallet address, they are basically the same thing.

I might later run you through how the mnuemomic phrase is being generated from private key, it's a six steps process to mine steps process but for now, we are good.