“If you’re having such issues on your meta mask wallet kindly go to the metamask support team for assistance.”

We’ve all seen these messages pop up in our comments, DMs, and even email once in a while once we’ve been in the crypto scene for a while. One of the biggest shortcomings of self-sovereignty over your assets is that it’s your responsibility to take extra precautions to protect them. No support teams will help you recover lost crypto if you fall victim to one of this space’s many scams.

Fortunately, you’re not alone in this. There are thousands of hardened degens out there who’ve been through the weeds and are more than happy to share their experiences with you.

The Basics

By now, you should understand that anyone who has your seed phrase can do as they please with the assets stored within. Knowing that, here are some actionable tips to keep this oh-so precious key safely stored and away from unwanted eyes:

1. Store your seed phrase and/or private key in a physical location, no digital copies

2. Use hard-to-crack passwords (plural)

3. Don’t trust links

4. Have a cold wallet that’s kept away from unsecured transactions

5. Diversify your storage locations to minimize risk vectors

6. Get a hardware wallet

Social Engineering

The biggest vector of failure in any system is always human error. It doesn’t matter how safely you store your keys and the safety measures you take if you’ll end up FOMO’ing into the next unverified contract crypto twitter is pumping. As such, the best way to protect your assets is to not only learn about the most common social engineering tactics, but to treat your wallet with the reverence it deserves.

You wouldn’t give out your bank account details to the first person who asks, so why would you grant access to your data to any dApp? Exercising allowance hygiene every once in a while will do wonders for your crypto security, and thinking twice before linking your wallet to a site could save you from the latest honeypot, exploit, or hack.

Ethereum and most popular chains are public ledgers, which means once you start making big moves, you’ll most likely become a target to scammers looking to steal your BAYC.

To protect yourself from being exploited, you should understand how scammers think: Scammers take advantage of your core emotions like greed, excitement, and fear. So to combat these manipulative techniques, just think twice about what’s happening before clicking on that “Connect Wallet” button.