laconicd/docs/basics/accounts.md

Accounts

This document describes the in-built accounts system of Ethermint. {synopsis}

Pre-requisite Readings

• Cosmos SDK Accounts {prereq}
• Ethereum Accounts {prereq}

Ethermint Accounts

Ethermint defines its own custom Account type that uses Ethereum's ECDSA secp256k1 curve for keys. This satisfies the EIP84 for full BIP44 paths. The root HD path for Ethermint-based accounts is m/44'/60'/0'/0.

+++ https://github.com/tharsis/ethermint/blob/main/types/account.pb.go#L28-L33

Addresses and Public Keys

BIP-0173 defines a new format for segregated witness output addresses that contains a human-readable part that identifies the Bech32 usage. Ethermint uses the following HRP (human readable prefix) as the base HRP:

Network	Mainnet	Testnet	Regtest
Ethermint	eth	eth

There are 3 main types of HRP for the Addresses/PubKeys available by default on Ethermint:

• Addresses and Keys for accounts, which identify users (e.g. the sender of a message). They are derived using the eth_secp256k1 curve.
• Addresses and Keys for validator operators, which identify the operators of validators. They are derived using the eth_secp256k1 curve.
• Addresses and Keys for consensus nodes, which identify the validator nodes participating in consensus. They are derived using the ed25519 curve.

	Address bech32 Prefix	Pubkey bech32 Prefix	Curve	Address byte length	Pubkey byte length
Accounts	eth	ethpub	eth_secp256k1	20	33 (compressed)
Validator Operator	ethvaloper	ethvaloperpub	eth_secp256k1	20	33 (compressed)
Consensus Nodes	ethvalcons	ethvalconspub	ed25519	20	32

Address formats for clients

EthAccount can be represented in both Bech32 (eth1...) and hex (0x...) formats for Ethereum's Web3 tooling compatibility.

The Bech32 format is the default format for Cosmos-SDK queries and transactions through CLI and REST clients. The hex format on the other hand, is the Ethereum common.Address representation of a Cosmos sdk.AccAddress.

• Address (Bech32): eth14au322k9munkmx5wrchz9q30juf5wjgz2cfqku
• Address (EIP55 Hex): 0xAF79152AC5dF276D9A8e1E2E22822f9713474902
• Compressed Public Key: {"@type":"/ethermint.crypto.v1beta1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"ApNNebT58zlZxO2yjHiRTJ7a7ufjIzeq5HhLrbmtg9Y/"}

Address conversion

The ethermintd debug addr <address> can be used to convert an address between hex and bech32 formats. For example:

ethermintd debug addr eth12uqc42yj77hk64cdr3vsnpkfs6k0pllln7rudt
    Address: [87 1 138 168 146 247 175 109 87 13 28 89 9 134 201 134 172 240 255 255]
    Address (hex): 57018AA892F7AF6D570D1C590986C986ACF0FFFF
    Bech32 Acc: eth12uqc42yj77hk64cdr3vsnpkfs6k0pllln7rudt
    Bech32 Val: ethvaloper12uqc42yj77hk64cdr3vsnpkfs6k0pllldvagr4

ethermintd debug addr 57018AA892F7af6D570D1c590986c986aCf0fFff
    Address: [87 1 138 168 146 247 175 109 87 13 28 89 9 134 201 134 172 240 255 255]
    Address (hex): 57018AA892F7AF6D570D1C590986C986ACF0FFFF
    Bech32 Acc: eth12uqc42yj77hk64cdr3vsnpkfs6k0pllln7rudt
    Bech32 Val: ethvaloper12uqc42yj77hk64cdr3vsnpkfs6k0pllldvagr4

::: tip Add the 0x prefix to the returned hex address above to represent the Ethereum hex address format. For example: Address (hex): 57018AA892F7AF6D570D1C590986C986ACF0FFFF implies that 0x57018AA892F7AF6D570D1C590986C986ACF0FFFF is the Ethereum hex address. :::

Key output

::: tip The Cosmos SDK Keyring output (i.e ethermintd keys) only supports addresses and public keys in Bech32 format. :::

We can use the keys show command of ethermintd with the flag --bech <type> (acc|val|cons) to obtain the addresses and keys as mentioned above,

ethermintd keys show mykey --bech acc
- name: mykey
  type: local
  address: eth1qsklxwt77qrxur494uvw07zjynu03dq9alwh37
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/ethermint.crypto.v1alpha1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"A8nbJ3eW9oAb2RNZoS8L71jFMfjk6zVa1UISYgKK9HPm"}'
  mnemonic: ""

ethermintd keys show test --bech val
- name: mykey
  type: local
  address: ethvaloper1qsklxwt77qrxur494uvw07zjynu03dq9rdsrlq
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/ethermint.crypto.v1alpha1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"A8nbJ3eW9oAb2RNZoS8L71jFMfjk6zVa1UISYgKK9HPm"}'
  mnemonic: ""

ethermintd keys show test --bech cons
- name: mykey
  type: local
  address: ethvalcons1qsklxwt77qrxur494uvw07zjynu03dq9h7rlnp
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/ethermint.crypto.v1alpha1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"A8nbJ3eW9oAb2RNZoS8L71jFMfjk6zVa1UISYgKK9HPm"}'
  mnemonic: ""

Querying an Account

You can query an account address using the CLI, gRPC or

Command Line Interface

# NOTE: the --output (-o) flag will define the output format in JSON or YAML (text)
ethermintd q auth account $(ethermintd keys show <MYKEY> -a) -o text
|
  '@type': /ethermint.types.v1beta1.EthAccount
  base_account:
    account_number: "3"
    address: inj14au322k9munkmx5wrchz9q30juf5wjgz2cfqku
    pub_key: null
    sequence: "0"
  code_hash: xdJGAYb3IzySfn2y3McDwOUAtlPKgic7e/rYBF2FpHA=

Cosmos gRPC and REST

# GET /cosmos/auth/v1beta1/accounts/{address}
curl -X GET "http://localhost:10337/cosmos/auth/v1beta1/accounts/eth14au322k9munkmx5wrchz9q30juf5wjgz2cfqku" -H "accept: application/json"

JSON-RPC

To retrieve the Ethereum hex address using Web3, use the JSON-RPC eth_accounts or personal_listAccounts endpoints:

# query against a local node
curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_accounts","params":[],"id":1}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:8545

curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"personal_listAccounts","params":[],"id":1}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:8545

Next {hide}

Learn about Ethermint transactions {hide}