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
babe	sr25519
im_online	sr25519
para_validator	sr25519
para_assignment	sr25519
authority_discovery	sr25519
beefy	ecdsa

Key Generation and Inspection

You can use polkadot 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 Polkadot Random Key

$ polkadot key generate -n polkadot
Secret phrase:       settle whisper usual blast device source region pumpkin ugly beyond promote cluster
  Network ID:        polkadot
  Secret seed:       0x2e6371e04b45f16cd5c2d66fc47c8ad7f2881215287c374abfa0e07fd003cb01
  Public key (hex):  0x9e65e97bd8ba80095440a68d1be71adff107c73627c8b85d29669721e02e2b24
  Account ID:        0x9e65e97bd8ba80095440a68d1be71adff107c73627c8b85d29669721e02e2b24
  Public key (SS58): 14agqii5GAiM5z4yzGhJdyWQ3a6HeY2oXvLdCrdhFXRnQ77D
  SS58 Address:      14agqii5GAiM5z4yzGhJdyWQ3a6HeY2oXvLdCrdhFXRnQ77D

Inspection

Inspect Created Key

$ ./polkadot key inspect -n polkadot "settle whisper usual blast device source region pumpkin ugly beyond promote cluster"
Secret phrase:       settle whisper usual blast device source region pumpkin ugly beyond promote cluster
  Network ID:        polkadot
  Secret seed:       0x2e6371e04b45f16cd5c2d66fc47c8ad7f2881215287c374abfa0e07fd003cb01
  Public key (hex):  0x9e65e97bd8ba80095440a68d1be71adff107c73627c8b85d29669721e02e2b24
  Account ID:        0x9e65e97bd8ba80095440a68d1be71adff107c73627c8b85d29669721e02e2b24
  Public key (SS58): 14agqii5GAiM5z4yzGhJdyWQ3a6HeY2oXvLdCrdhFXRnQ77D
  SS58 Address:      14agqii5GAiM5z4yzGhJdyWQ3a6HeY2oXvLdCrdhFXRnQ77D

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

$ polkadot key inspect -n polkadot "settle whisper usual blast device source region pumpkin ugly beyond promote cluster//Stash//0"
Secret Key URI `settle whisper usual blast device source region pumpkin ugly beyond promote cluster//Stash//0` is account:
  Network ID:        polkadot
 Secret seed:       0xe9437b365161e8228e8abd53d64e6b31058dcddcd0b96f895045ecc41579ee3e
  Public key (hex):  0xd8ed7b942f6e590b06e99951ac10e3312f65f01df5b3f250b70374fc2da1046d
  Account ID:        0xd8ed7b942f6e590b06e99951ac10e3312f65f01df5b3f250b70374fc2da1046d
  Public key (SS58): 15uRtdeE4MyMHV9LP1UHKqTx4f8Qa8uVZUpxWWw8VKSroucK
  SS58 Address:      15uRtdeE4MyMHV9LP1UHKqTx4f8Qa8uVZUpxWWw8VKSroucK

Substrate Devops Guide