In Blockstream Green, your funds are stored inside accounts, which are stored inside wallets. Accounts enable you to conveniently separate your funds in one wallet. For example, you might use one account for trading and another account for daily spending.
Tip: Most new users will probably prefer to stick to one account per wallet.
Wallets
Wallets store the private keys used to access your funds. To start sending and receiving funds on Blockstream Green, you must create at least one wallet.
The Blockstream Green desktop app allows you to manage multiple wallets. The Blockstream Green mobile app only supports one wallet per network (Bitcoin, Liquid, and testnet).
For each wallet you create, you need to write down a separate 24-word mnemonic, set a separate PIN, and activate separate 2FA methods.
Note: The PIN to your wallet is tied to the device you use to access the wallet, while the mnemonic and two-factor authentication (2FA) method are tied to the wallet itself. That means if you restore an existing wallet on a new device, you will need to set a separate PIN. However, you will use the same mnemonic and 2FA method across all devices that access your wallet.
The different wallets you manage on your device are unrelated to each other. If you lose access to the funds in one wallet (for example because you lost your mnemonic backup), the funds in the other wallets are not affected.
Accounts
An account is a subsection of wallets that allows you to separate funds according to use-case without the need to create multiple new wallets. By default, each wallet you create comes with one account (by default it will be called Main Account). Both the Blockstream Green desktop and mobile app allow you to manage multiple additional accounts in each wallet.
Accounts are tied to the wallet in which they are created. The mnemonic for your wallet unlocks access to all accounts inside that wallet. If you lose the access to your wallet, you lose the access to all accounts inside the wallet.
What Is the Purpose of Using Multiple Accounts?
Some of the benefits of using multiple accounts include:
Easier Accounting
Maintaining multiple accounts can be useful if you want to keep track of different income streams or budgets without having to write down and store a new mnemonic backup for each balance.
Increased Security
You can create an 2of3 multisig account for better security and to avoid a waiting period if using our recovery procedure.
Stronger Privacy
Your account balance shows the total value of all UTXOs in your account. When you make a transaction, your Blockstream Green app may combine transaction outputs in order to send the required amount of funds. Combining UTXOs can compromise your privacy as it links multiple addresses to the same sender.
By creating separate accounts within the same wallet, you can control which UTXOs are combined and which aren’t. Blockstream Green will never combine UTXOs from two different accounts, even if they are part of the same wallet.
