Keys And Accounts

This page will describe some basic information on keys and accounts. For a more general and detailed explanation see learn accounts on the polkadot wiki page.

Encryption Schemes

Name	Type
ed25519	The vanilla ed25519 implementation using Schnorr signatures.
sr25519	The Schnorrkel/Ristretto sr25519 variant using Schnorr signatures. (default)
ecdsa	ECDSA signatures on secp256k1

Session Key Types

Name	Type
grandpa	ed25519
authority_discovery	sr25519
aura	sr25519
babe	sr25519
para_validator	sr25519
para_assignment	sr25519
beefy	ecdsa

Key Generation and Inspection

You can use polkadot-parachain keys or the subkey command to generate and inspect keys.

Two important subcommands are:

generate Create a new random account and print the private key data or save to a file.
inspect View the account data for an account by passing a secret phrase or seed.

Some important options are:

--network specify the network the keys will be used on, default is substrate.
--scheme the scheme for the keys, default is sr25519.

Generate

Create a Random Account Key

$ polkadot-parachain key generate
Secret phrase:       test test test test test test test test test test test junk
  Network ID:        substrate
  Secret seed:       0x4ca479f5e0dc0ee04ebcbadb64c220267dad42b8cfa4da1f0874787523b4709c
  Public key (hex):  0xd000ac5048ae858aca2e6aa43e00661562a47026fe88ff83992430204a159752
  Account ID:        0xd000ac5048ae858aca2e6aa43e00661562a47026fe88ff83992430204a159752
  Public key (SS58): 5GmS1wtCfR4tK5SSgnZbVT4kYw5W8NmxmijcsxCQE6oLW6A8
  SS58 Address:      5GmS1wtCfR4tK5SSgnZbVT4kYw5W8NmxmijcsxCQE6oLW6A8

You can save it to a file using

Inspection

Inspect Created Key

$ polkadot-parachain key inspect "test test test test test test test test test test test junk"
Secret phrase:       test test test test test test test test test test test junk
  Network ID:        substrate
  Secret seed:       0x4ca479f5e0dc0ee04ebcbadb64c220267dad42b8cfa4da1f0874787523b4709c
  Public key (hex):  0xd000ac5048ae858aca2e6aa43e00661562a47026fe88ff83992430204a159752
  Account ID:        0xd000ac5048ae858aca2e6aa43e00661562a47026fe88ff83992430204a159752
  Public key (SS58): 5GmS1wtCfR4tK5SSgnZbVT4kYw5W8NmxmijcsxCQE6oLW6A8
  SS58 Address:      5GmS1wtCfR4tK5SSgnZbVT4kYw5W8NmxmijcsxCQE6oLW6A8

Inspect Created Key With Hard Derivation //Stash//0

$ polkadot-parachain key inspect " test test test test test test test test test test test junk//Stash//0"
Secret Key URI ` test test test test test test test test test test test junk//Stash//0` is account:
  Network ID:        substrate
  Secret seed:       0x88f170a1438f83de6c2b845282ebb577dfcaee4c896655e64777ba220b3ad33d
  Public key (hex):  0xa2a73aaf576ed83371c92642a80706bf4b007c40f689d649aa7b075833d7242c
  Account ID:        0xa2a73aaf576ed83371c92642a80706bf4b007c40f689d649aa7b075833d7242c
  Public key (SS58): 5FjyHtMBm7kArqgSX52DAQvZeJ2Tq5sQBwFfSmZ3NWMHs4Be
  SS58 Address:      5FjyHtMBm7kArqgSX52DAQvZeJ2Tq5sQBwFfSmZ3NWMHs4Be

Managing a node session keys

In Polkadot, Session Keys refer to the hot keys set on a node to perform various network operations, such as collating or validating blocks.

Create new session keys on a node via the `author_rotateKeys` RPC method

On the remote machine hosting the node, you can create new session keys with the following commmand:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"id":1, "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method": "author_rotateKeys", "params":[]}' http://localhost:9944

The response output will then show the hex-encoded concatenation of the session public keys. This is intended to be submitted on-chain using the session.setKeys extrinsics.

Insert a specific key onto a node keystore via the `author_insertKey` RPC method

To inject a key via RPC, use the following command:

curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ --data '{ "jsonrpc":"2.0", "method":"author_insertKey", "params":["'"${KEY_TYPE}"'", "'"${KEY_SEED}"'"],"id":1 }' http://localhost:9933

Set:

KEY_TYPE to a session key type (eg. babe, grandpa)
KEY_SEED to a secret seed or private key

Insert a specific key onto a node keystore using the node binary

To inject a key via the node binary, use the following command:

polkadot-parachain key insert -d <my_chain_folder> --key-type ${KEY_TYPE} --scheme ${KEY_SCHEME} --suri ${KEY_FILE}

KEY_TYPE: a session key type (eg. babe, grandpa)
KEY_SCHEME: an encryption scheme (eg. sr25519, ed25519, ecdsa)
KEY_FILE: a plain text file which contains the seed or private key

Parachain Devops Guide