What is an Ethereum wallet?
An Ethereum wallet is the tool you use to access and manage your ETH. It does not hold your coins in the way a physical wallet holds cash. Your ETH stays recorded on the Ethereum blockchain, while the wallet manages the private keys that let you prove ownership and approve transactions.
It also gives you an Ethereum address, usually beginning with 0x, which you can share when someone needs to send you ETH. With a self-custody wallet, those keys stay under your control rather than with an exchange or another third party.
An Ethereum wallet can also do more than send and receive ETH. ETH is used to pay gas, the fee required for transactions on Ethereum, and the same wallet can also manage supported ERC-20 tokens and connect to apps built on the network. In practice, that makes the wallet your main way of interacting with Ethereum rather than just a place to check a balance.
What is an Ethereum address?
An Ethereum address is the identifier other people use to send you ETH and supported tokens. Your wallet generates it for you, and it almost always begins with 0x followed by a long string of letters and numbers. Most wallets can also display the same address as a QR code, which is easier than reading it out character by character.
An address is safe to share. On its own it cannot be used to move your funds, as spending requires the private key that sits behind it, and that key never leaves your wallet. What an address does reveal is public: anyone who has it can look up that address's balance and transaction history on a block explorer, because the Ethereum ledger is open to everyone.
Your recovery credentials are a different matter entirely. Nobody needs them in order to pay you, so a request for your private key or recovery password is always a scam, however the request is dressed up.
