# Delegate Accounts

Before getting into registering you account, it's important to make a distinction on the different types of accounts an IoTeX Delegate owns: a **Profile Account**, an **Operator Account**, and a **Rewards Account**. These are not necessarily three different accounts. 

{% hint style="info" %}
Be sure to carefully read all the information below in order to create all your accounts in the most secure way possible for your needs. 
{% endhint %}

## Profile Account

This is the main, and most important, of all three accounts for a Delegate. The Profile Account is used to register the Delegate in the network, manage its configuration, and set the Operator and Rewards accounts addresses. Because this is the most important account, you may want to generate it using a hardware wallet - such as the Ledger or Trezor wallets. 

{% hint style="warning" %}
Please notice that you will not be able to change the Profile Account address for your Delegate. Losing or exposing the private key of your Profile Account **will likely result in losing access to your delegate profile, funds, and rewards permanently**. \
\
For this reason, it's highly recommended that you use a **hardware wallet** for your profile account and that you pick a different address for the operator account.
{% endhint %}

## Operator Account

This account is used for the actual node software running on your node servers (check out [High Availability](/get-started/advanced/high-availability.md)to learn how to run backup nodes that share the same Operator Account). We advise using an Operator Account that is different from the Profile Account, to avoid exposing your Profile Account to the node operator if it's managed by a third party, or to hackers that could get access to your node configuration on the server. Because the private key must be included in the node configuration file, **you cannot use a hardware wallet for your Operator Account.** 

If your Operator Account's private key gets lost or exposed, you can just use a different address as long as you also change it in your Delegate profile.

## Rewards Account

{% hint style="info" %}
Please notice that IoTeX provides [HERMES](https://hermes.to): an automatic rewards distribution system based on smart contracts that take care of automatically distributing rewards to your voters based on your rewards policy.

Check out the [HERMES guide](https://hermes.to/user-guide) for more information.
{% endhint %}

{% hint style="warning" %}
Please notice that if you configure your own custom Rewards Account (i.e., you will not using HERMES), then you will receive all the node rewards to your account, and you'll be fully responsible for distributing rewards due to your voters based on your rewards policy.
{% endhint %}

This is the last account to configure for a Delegate profile. The Rewards Account receives the Delegate rewards when you claim them. Depending on your needs, the Rewards Account can match the Profile Account, the Operator Account, or it can be its own account.

Since claiming your Delegate rewards requires using the [ioctl command-line client](https://docs.iotex.io/reference/ioctl-cli-reference), you **cannot use a hardware wallet for your Rewards Account**, because the command-line tool does not support hardware wallets.

If your Rewards Account's private key gets lost or exposed, you can just use a different address as well as you also change it in your Delegate profile.

### Summary

| Account              | Description                | Hardware wallet             |
| -------------------- | -------------------------- | --------------------------- |
| **Profile Account**  | Main delegate account      | Optional / Highly suggested |
| **Operator Account** | Required to run the node   | No                          |
| **Rewards Account**  | Receives the block rewards | No                          |


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