How an HD wallet works

How many addresses can an HD wallet generate ?

An HD wallet can generate an infinite number of addresses.

This diagram should help in understanding how the keys are generated.

If you want to dive into the technical details, here’s a good source:

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A private key is 256 bit number, the maximum number of addresses is therefore less than 2^256 .
How can a wallet generate more than 2^256 addresses ?

Private keys in Cardano are 96 bytes long and public keys are 64 bytes long.

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