Burner wallet

A burner wallet is a separate, low-value crypto account used to connect to untrusted apps or airdrop claims, so that a malicious approval or signature cannot reach the owner's main holdings. Ledger Academy describes a burner wallet as a single-use account meant for connecting to potentially malicious blockchain apps, holding only enough crypto to cover the transaction it was set up for and nothing that links it to its owner, such as an ENS name. Because one secret recovery phrase can generate many accounts, Ledger suggests a vault account for storage, a separate account for trading and a burner for signing contracts.

The protection has a limit. A burner contains the damage from a bad token approval or signature, but if the seed phrase behind it leaks, revoke.cash warns that every address tied to that phrase is affected. Wallet history also matters for eligibility: Arbitrum's anti-Sybil rules docked a point from wallets holding under 0.005 ETH that had used no more than one smart contract, so many thin wallets can look like a Sybil attack.