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Accounts

Pre-requisite Readings {hide}

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 Keybase.

Keybase

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

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/7d7821b9af132b0f6131640195326aa02b6751db/crypto/keys/types.go#L13-L86

The default implementation of Keybase of the Cosmos SDK is dbKeybase.

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/7d7821b9af132b0f6131640195326aa02b6751db/crypto/keys/keybase.go

A few notes on the Keybase methods as implemented in dbKeybase:

  • Sign(name, passphrase string, msg []byte) ([]byte, crypto.PubKey, error) strictly deals with the signature of the message bytes. Some preliminary work should be done beforehand to prepare and encode the message into a canonical []byte form. See an example of message preparation from the auth module. 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/7d7821b9af132b0f6131640195326aa02b6751db/x/auth/types/txbuilder.go#L176-L209
  • CreateMnemonic(name string, language Language, passwd string, algo SigningAlgo) (info Info, seed string, err error) creates a new mnemonic and prints it in the logs, but it does not persist it on disk.
  • CreateAccount(name, mnemonic, bip39Passwd, encryptPasswd string, account uint32, index uint32) (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 CreateAccount method derives keys and addresses using secp256k1 as implemented in the Tendermint library. As a result, it only works for creating account keys and addresses, not consensus keys. See Addresses for more.

The current implementation of dbKeybase is basic and does not offer on-demand locking. If an instance of dbKeybase is created, the underlying db is locked meaning no other process can access it besides the one in which it was instantiated. This is the reason why the default SDK client uses another implementation of the Keybase interface called lazyKeybase:

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/7d7821b9af132b0f6131640195326aa02b6751db/crypto/keys/lazy_keybase.go

lazyKeybase is simple wrapper around dbKeybase which locks the database only when operations are to be performed and unlocks it immediately after. With the lazyKeybase, it is possible for the command-line interface to create a new account while the rest server is running. It is also possible to pipe multiple CLI commands.

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 follow the Pubkey interface defined in tendermint's crypto package:

+++ https://github.com/tendermint/tendermint/blob/bc572217c07b90ad9cee851f193aaa8e9557cbc7/crypto/crypto.go#L22-L27

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

Note that in the Cosmos SDK, Pubkeys are not manipulated in their raw form. Instead, they are double encoded using Amino and bech32. In the SDK 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/7d7821b9af132b0f6131640195326aa02b6751db/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/7d7821b9af132b0f6131640195326aa02b6751db/types/address.go#L71-L80

Of note, the Marhsal() and Bytes() method both return the same raw []byte form of the address, the former being needed for Protobuff 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. Next is an example:

+++ https://github.com/cosmos/cosmos-sdk/blob/7d7821b9af132b0f6131640195326aa02b6751db/types/address.go#L229-L243

Next {hide}

Learn about gas and fees {hide}