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Accounts

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

Pre-requisite Readings

Account Definition

In the Cosmos SDK, an account designates a pair of public key PubKey and private key PrivKey. The PubKey can be derived to generate various Addresses, which are used to identify users (among other parties) in the application. Addresses are also associated with messages to identify the sender of the message. The PrivKey is used to generate digital signatures to prove that an Address associated with the PrivKey approved of a given message.

To derive PubKeys and PrivKeys, the Cosmos SDK uses a standard called BIP32. This standard defines how to build an HD wallet, where a wallet is a set of accounts. At the core of every account, there is a seed, which takes the form of a 12 or 24-words mnemonic. From this mnemonic, it is possible to derive any number of PrivKeys using one-way cryptographic function. Then, a PubKey can be derived from the PrivKey. Naturally, the mnemonic is the most sensitive information, as private keys can always be re-generated if the mnemonic is preserved.

     Account 0                         Account 1                         Account 2

+------------------+              +------------------+               +------------------+
|                  |              |                  |               |                  |
|    Address 0     |              |    Address 1     |               |    Address 2     |
|        ^         |              |        ^         |               |        ^         |
|        |         |              |        |         |               |        |         |
|        |         |              |        |         |               |        |         |
|        |         |              |        |         |               |        |         |
|        +         |              |        +         |               |        +         |
|  Public key 0    |              |  Public key 1    |               |  Public key 2    |
|        ^         |              |        ^         |               |        ^         |
|        |         |              |        |         |               |        |         |
|        |         |              |        |         |               |        |         |
|        |         |              |        |         |               |        |         |
|        +         |              |        +         |               |        +         |
|  Private key 0   |              |  Private key 1   |               |  Private key 2   |
|        ^         |              |        ^         |               |        ^         |
+------------------+              +------------------+               +------------------+
         |                                 |                                  |
         |                                 |                                  |
         |                                 |                                  |
         +--------------------------------------------------------------------+
                                           |
                                           |
                                 +---------+---------+
                                 |                   |
                                 |  Master PrivKey   |
                                 |                   |
                                 +-------------------+
                                           |
                                           |
                                 +---------+---------+
                                 |                   |
                                 |  Mnemonic (Seed)  |
                                 |                   |
                                 +-------------------+

In the Cosmos SDK, accounts are stored and managed via an object called a Keyring.

Keyring

A Keyring is an object that stores and manages accounts. In the Cosmos SDK, a Keyring implementation follows the Keyring interface:

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/v0.40.0-rc3/crypto/keyring/keyring.go#L50-L88

The default implementation of Keyring comes from the third-party 99designs/keyring library.

A few notes on the Keyring methods:

  • Sign(uid string, payload []byte) ([]byte, tmcrypto.PubKey, error) strictly deals with the signature of the payload bytes. Some preliminary work should be done beforehand to prepare and encode the transaction into a canonical []byte form. Protobuf being not deterministic, it has been decided in ADR-020 that the canonical payload to sign is the SignDoc struct, deterministically encoded using ADR-027. Note that signature verification is not implemented in the SDK by default, it is deferred to the anteHandler. +++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/v0.40.0-rc3/proto/cosmos/tx/v1beta1/tx.proto#L47-L64

  • NewAccount(uid, mnemonic, bip39Passwd, hdPath string, algo SignatureAlgo) (Info, error) creates a new account based on the bip44 path and persists it on disk (note that the PrivKey is encrypted with a passphrase before being persisted, it is never stored unencrypted). In the context of this method, the account and address parameters refer to the segment of the BIP44 derivation path (e.g. 0, 1, 2, ...) used to derive the PrivKey and PubKey from the mnemonic (note that given the same mnemonic and account, the same PrivKey will be generated, and given the same account and address, the same PubKey and Address will be generated). Finally, note that the NewAccount method derives keys and addresses using the algorithm specified in the last argument algo. Currently, the SDK supports two public key algorithms:

  • ExportPrivKeyArmor(uid, encryptPassphrase string) (armor string, err error) exports a private key in ASCII-armored encrypted format, using the given passphrase. You can then either import it again into the keyring using the ImportPrivKey(uid, armor, passphrase string) function, or decrypt it into a raw private key using the UnarmorDecryptPrivKey(armorStr string, passphrase string) function.

Also see the Addresses section for more information.

Addresses and PubKeys

Addresses and PubKeys are both public information that identify actors in the application. There are 3 main types of Addresses/PubKeys available by default in the Cosmos SDK:

  • Addresses and Keys for accounts, which identify users (e.g. the sender of a message). They are derived using the secp256k1 curve.
  • Addresses and Keys for validator operators, which identify the operators of validators. They are derived using the 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 cosmos cosmospub secp256k1 20 33
Validator Operator cosmosvaloper cosmosvaloperpub secp256k1 20 33
Consensus Nodes cosmosvalcons cosmosvalconspub ed25519 20 32

PubKeys

PubKeys used in the Cosmos SDK are Protobuf messages and have the following methods:

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/master/crypto/types/types.go#L8-L17

  • For secp256k1 keys, the actual implementation can be found here.
  • For ed25519 keys, it can be found here.

In both case, the actual key (as raw bytes) is the compressed form of the pubkey. The first byte is a 0x02 byte if the y-coordinate is the lexicographically largest of the two associated with the x-coordinate. Otherwise the first byte is a 0x03. This prefix is followed with the x-coordinate.

Note that in the Cosmos SDK, Pubkeys are not manipulated in their raw bytes form. Instead, they are encoded to string using Amino and bech32. In the SDK, it is done by first calling the Bytes() method on the raw Pubkey (which applies amino encoding), and then the ConvertAndEncode method of bech32.

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/v0.40.0-rc3/types/address.go#L579-L729

Addresses

The Cosmos SDK comes by default with 3 types of addresses:

  • AccAddress for accounts.
  • ValAddress for validator operators.
  • ConsAddress for validator nodes.

Each of these address types are an alias for an hex-encoded []byte array of length 20. Here is the standard way to obtain an address aa from a Pubkey pub:

aa := sdk.AccAddress(pub.Address().Bytes())

These addresses implement the Address interface:

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/v0.40.0-rc3/types/address.go#L73-L82

Of note, the Marshal() and Bytes() method both return the same raw []byte form of the address, the former being needed for Protobuf compatibility. Also, the String() method is used to return the bech32 encoded form of the address, which should be the only address format with which end-user interract. Here is an example:

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/v0.40.0-rc3/types/address.go#L232-L246

Next {hide}

Learn about gas and fees {hide}