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Before you create your first dev-controlled wallet, it helps to understand the Entity Secret and wallet sets.

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Entity Secret

The Entity Secret is a 32-byte private key that secures all dev-controlled wallets you create with it. You generate it, store it in your backend, and register it with Circle. Circle never stores the Entity Secret; you retain full custody. You use it (via the SDK or API) to authenticate when creating wallet sets, creating wallets, and sending transactions. Losing it means losing access to the wallets it backs, so you must store it securely and use the recovery flow the SDK provides. For details on Entity Secret generation, registration, rotation, and recovery, see Entity secret management.

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Wallet set

A wallet set is a hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet: all wallets in the set are created and managed by the same cryptographic key: your Entity Secret. You create one or more wallet sets, then create wallets inside each set. Organizing wallets into sets helps you scale (for example, one set per tenant or product) and manage many wallets from one backend. For most use cases, one wallet set is sufficient: you can create up to 10 million wallets in a single set. On EVM chains, wallets in the same set can share the same address across chains; see Unified Wallet Addressing on EVM Chains for how to create and derive same-address wallets.