Glossary
Derivation path
The route through a wallet's key tree (e.g. m/84'/0'/0'/0/0) that decides which address a seed phrase produces — and why one phrase yields many addresses.
A derivation path is the address of a key within the tree of keys a seed phrase
generates (defined by BIP32/BIP44). Written like m/84'/0'/0'/0/0, it tells the
wallet exactly which account and address to compute from the master seed.
The same seed phrase produces different addresses on different paths, which is
why Bitcoin has Legacy (1…), SegWit (3…), and Native SegWit (bc1…) formats,
and Ethereum uses its own path. During recovery this matters: a phrase can be
correct yet show an unfamiliar address simply because you're looking at the wrong
path. See the recovery guide.