When we refer to something as a wallet, we assume that it's something that holds money. In fact, an Ethereum wallet does not store any ether or tokens. Wallets keep the private keys that are needed for signing the transactions. An Ethereum wallet, just like a cryptocurrency wallet, can be classified as a non-deterministic or deterministic wallet.
Understanding the wallet technology
Understanding non-deterministic and deterministic wallets
What's the difference between these two types of wallets? They are different in how the private keys are backed up. A non-deterministic wallet generates private keys that are random and independent of each other (such as in the left-hand side of the following diagram). There is...