This article will guide you through the process of importing your wallet from OKX to Xverse, explaining why understanding different Bitcoin address formats is crucial and how your seed phrase plays a pivotal role in this transition.
Understanding Seed Phrases and Bitcoin Address Formats
A seed phrase, also known as a recovery phrase, is a series of words generated by your wallet. This crucial security feature allows you to access your crypto on the blockchain. Essentially, your seed phrase is responsible for deriving all the wallet addresses associated with your funds.
Over the years, Bitcoin has undergone several updates to enhance security, efficiency, and scalability. These updates have introduced different types of Bitcoin addresses:
- Legacy addresses: Start with '1' and were the first version of Bitcoin addresses.
- Nested SegWit addresses: Begin with '3' and were designed to help reduce transaction fees and increase block capacity.
- Native SegWit addresses: Known for starting with 'bc1' and further optimize block space and fees.
- Taproot addresses: Recently introduced and start with 'bc1p', offering benefits in terms of privacy and efficiency.
In Xverse, we use Nested SegWit addresses for Bitcoin and Taproot addresses for Ordinals, Runes, and BRC-20 tokens. This differentiation is crucial for optimizing transaction costs and security, but it can create confusion when importing wallets from platforms like OKX that might use different address formats or combinations.
How to Export Your Wallet from OKX to Xverse
Now that you understand the basics of seed phrases and address types, let’s walk through the process of importing your wallet from OKX to Xverse:
- Prepare Your Seed Phrase: Ensure you have access to your 12 to 24-word seed phrase from your OKX wallet. This phrase is essential for the import process as it holds the key to all addresses and funds associated with your wallet.
- Setting Up Your Xverse Wallet: When you begin setting up your Xverse wallet, you will be prompted to enter your seed phrase—the 12 to 24 words. Remember, Xverse doesn’t support WIF or HEX private keys. Carefully input your seed phrase from OKX. This action will automatically generate the corresponding Nested SegWit and Taproot addresses in Xverse.
- Verify the Addresses: Once your wallet is set up, verify that the addresses have been correctly generated. You should see a Nested SegWit address starting with '3' for your Bitcoin and a Taproot address starting with 'bc1p' for your Ordinals, Runes, and BRC-20 tokens.
- Recover Your Bitcoin: You may need to recover your Bitcoin from your Taproot address by following the steps outlined in the article, 'Can I recover BTC sent to the Ordinal address?' Make sure to follow the steps outlined to ensure proper handling and recovery of your assets.
*Please note, as part of this process, you will need to have some BTC in your address starting with '3' (Nested SegWit) — this is used to cover the transaction fees when recovering your Bitcoin.