All terms
Your public destination for receiving funds, derived from your public key.
An address is a string like 0x742d... on Ethereum or a shorter base58 string on Solana. It is derived from your public key and is safe to share. Anyone who has it can send you funds, and anyone can look up everything that address has ever done.
Addresses are chain specific in most cases. An Ethereum address works on every EVM chain, but sending Solana tokens to it will lose them permanently.
Always send a small test amount first when using a new address, especially across chains.
That an address is like a bank account number you can be given over the phone. It is thirty odd characters with no error correction and no name attached, so one wrong character sends the money to a place nobody controls. Always copy and paste, then check the first and last six characters against the source.
Common questions
Is it safe to share my address publicly?
What happens if I send to the wrong address?
Where to go next
More foundations terms
Want this explained out loud?
Some of these land faster in conversation than in writing. Sessions are one to one and you can ask anything, including the things that feel too obvious to ask.