Derivation path

Derivation path is the address of a private key inside a Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet tree. A single mnemonic can produce billions of distinct keys along different paths, and each wallet knows which path to use for which network.

Path structure

The BIP-44 standard defines a five-level hierarchy:

m / purpose' / coin_type' / account' / change / address_index

A concrete TON example: m/44'/607'/0'/0/0.

• 44’ — purpose, fixed for BIP-44.
• 607’ — coin type assigned to TON in the SLIP-0044 registry.
• 0’ — account index (if the user has multiple accounts).
• 0 — change (external/internal addresses; TON typically uses 0).
• 0 — address index within the account.

The apostrophe (') marks hardened derivation, meaning the child key cannot be computed from the parent public key alone.

Why it matters

The same seed under different paths produces different wallets. Importing the same 24-word mnemonic into a TON wallet and an Ethereum wallet yields different addresses because the paths differ. That is by design.

But if two wallets in the same network use different default paths, users can appear to “lose” their balance on import. Migrating a mnemonic from an older wallet into Tonkeeper sometimes shows an empty balance because the old wallet used m/44'/396'/0' or another non-standard path.

TON specifics

Most modern TON wallets use the standard path (m/44'/607'/0'/0/0) and never expose it to the user. In advanced scenarios it does become visible:

• Multi-account. Tonkeeper lets a user add multiple wallets under the same seed — these are derivation paths with different account_index values.
• Hardware import. Connecting a Ledger sometimes asks the user to pick the path explicitly.
• Wallet versions. Wallet v3 / v4 / v5 are different smart contracts on top of the same base key; the path refers to the key, not the contract.

When import “doesn’t add up”, it is almost always either a typo in the mnemonic or a non-standard derivation path.