Accounts

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

Pre-requisite Readings

• Cosmos SDK Accounts
• Ethereum Accounts

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.

Copy // EthAccount implements the auth.Account interface and embeds an // auth.BaseAccount type. It is compatible with the auth.AccountKeeper. type EthAccount struct { *authtypes.BaseAccount `json:"base_account" yaml:"base_account"` CodeHash []byte `json:"code_hash" yaml:"code_hash"` }

Addresses and Public Keys

There are 3 main types of 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

EthAccounts can be represented in both Bech32 and hex format 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): eth1crwhac03z2pcgu88jfnqnwu66xlthlz2rhljah
• Address (EIP55 Hex): 0xc0dd7ee1f112838470e7926609bb9ad1bebbfc4a
• Compressed Public Key (Bech32): ethpub1pfqnmk6pqnwwuw0h9hj58t2hyzwvqc3truhhp5tl5hfucezcfy2rs8470nkyzju2vmk645fzmw2wveaqcqek767kwa0es9rmxe9nmmjq84cpny3fvj6tpg

You can query an account address using the Cosmos CLI or REST clients:

Copy # NOTE: the --output (-o) flag will define the output format in JSON or YAML (text) ethermintcli q auth account $(ethermintcli keys show <MYKEY> -a) -o text | address: eth1f8rqrfwut7ngkxwth0gt99h0lxnxsp09ngvzwl eth_address: 0x49c601A5DC5FA68b19CBbbd0b296eFF9a66805e5 coins: - denom: aphoton amount: "1000000000000000000" - denom: stake amount: "999999999900000000" public_key: ethpub1pfqnmkepqw45vpsn6dzvm7k22zrghx0nfewjdfacy7wyycv5evfk57kyhwr8cqj5r4x account_number: 0 sequence: 1 code_hash: c5d2460186f7233c927e7db2dcc703c0e500b653ca82273b7bfad8045d85a470 Copy # GET /auth/accounts/{address} curl -X GET "<NODE_IP>/auth/accounts/eth1f8rqrfwut7ngkxwth0gt99h0lxnxsp09ngvzwl" -H "accept: application/json"

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

To retrieve the Ethereum hex address using Web3, use the JSON-RPC eth_accounts endpoint:

Copy # 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:26664

Next

Learn about Ethermint transactions