Goal: Start the club and practice security basics. Cover: Seed phrases, wallet types, permissions, scams, backups. Activity: Create a Phantom practice wallet and secure the seed phrase (no real funds). Takeaway: “I can keep my assets safe and spot red flags.”

1) Module overview

This session orients the club, sets security norms, and gets everyone comfortable with wallets. Members leave with a practice wallet, a safety checklist, and a personal backup plan.

2) Core talking points

• Keys come in pairs. A private key is secret; it creates digital signatures that authorize actions. A public key is shareable; others use it to verify those signatures. This is called public‑key (asymmetric) cryptography. On Solana, transactions are approved by signatures made with your private key. See Cloudflare’s plain‑English explainer: How does public key cryptography work?
• Addresses (what you share to receive assets) are derived from your public key.
• Seed phrase (BIP‑39) = human‑readable backup that deterministically regenerates one or more private keys. Anyone with the seed can recreate your wallet and spend funds. Many wallets support an optional passphrase (“25th word”) — lose it and funds are unrecoverable. See the official spec: BIP‑39: Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys
• Wallet apps (e.g., Phantom) are key managers: they hold/derive keys locally and present clear prompts to connect, sign a message (prove control), or sign a transaction (may move funds). For fundamentals, see Solana docs: Transactions and Instructions and Core Concepts

3) Activity — Create a Phantom practice wallet

• Install & verify: Use official sources and confirm the publisher.
  • Phantom official downloads: phantom.com/download
  • Phantom Chrome Web Store listing: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/phantom
• Create: New wallet → set a strong local password → write down the seed on paper (no screenshots or cloud storage).
• Safety checks: Turn off auto‑approve; review Connected Apps; practice signing a message (not a transaction). Read Solana’s guidance on auto‑approve tradeoffs: How to auto approve transactions
• Backup plan: Decide where the paper seed will live (e.g. sealed envelope at home). For meaningful funds, plan to migrate to a hardware wallet later. Why hardware wallets: How Ledger hardware wallets work and An Offline Key is the Only Key

Facilitator tip: Airdrop some SOL to your members to get them started on DeFi activities

4) Personal safety checklist