Create a Prysm wallet
Background
Prysm features a built-in hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallet. HD wallets let you create new validator private keys deterministically from a seed phrase, shown as an English mnemonic following the BIP-39 standard upon wallet creation. If you created a deposit using the official Ethereum launchpad and want to run Prysm using it, see our dedicated instructions here.
Validator private keys are encrypted with the wallet's password using the EIP-2335 keystore.json standard for storing BLS12-381 private keys. This keystore.json file, along with its derivation path, comprises an account in an HD wallet.
Usage
Wallet creation
To start using the HD wallet, you can create a new wallet using:
./prysm.sh validator wallet create
You'll need to set a strong password for your new HD wallet, containing at least 1 uppercase letter, 1 number, a special character, and be at least 8 characters long. Any unicode characters can be used for your wallet password.
Then select HD wallet when prompted. You can also create a wallet non-interactively by using the following command line flags, which are also viewable by typing ./prysm.sh validator wallet create --help.
| Flag | Usage |
|---|---|
--wallet-dir | Path to a wallet directory (default: "$HOME/Eth2Validators/prysm-wallet-v2") |
--keymanager-kind | Type of wallet to create, either "direct", "derived, or "remote" (default "derived") |
--wallet-password-file | Path to a plain-text, password.txt file to lock your wallet |
--mnemonic-25th-word-file | (Advanced) Path to a plain-text, .txt file containing a 25th word passphrase for your mnemonic for HD wallets. |
--skip-mnemonic-25th-word-check | Allows for skipping the check for a mnemonic 25th word passphrase for HD wallets. |
Here's a full example on how to create an HD wallet at $HOME/myhdwallet
./prysm.sh validator wallet create --wallet-dir=$HOME/myhdwallet --keymanager-kind=derived --wallet-password-file=password.txt
Wallet recovery
You can fully recover an HD wallet along with all its accounts from a 24-word english mnemonic phrase generated during the wallet's creation process (which you should have stored offline). To recover your HD wallet in Prysm, you can run
./prysm.sh validator wallet recover
Output
✔ Enter the wallet recovery phrase: layer write film stuff camp album strong ...
Enter a wallet directory: /Users/johndoe/Library/Eth2Validators/.prysm-wallet-v2
New wallet password: *********
Confirm password: *********
Enter how many accounts you would like to recover: 2
[2020-07-27 11:54:16] INFO accounts: Successfully recovered HD wallet with 2 accounts. Please use accounts list to view details for your accounts. wallet-path=/Users/johndoe/Library/Eth2Validators/prysm-wallet-v2
Your accounts are generated deterministically from your recovery phrase, so you had 100 validator accounts on the wallet you want to recover, you can easily do so in Prysm.
| Flag | Usage |
|---|---|
--wallet-dir | Path to a wallet directory (default: "$HOME/Eth2Validators/prysm-wallet-v2") |
--num-accounts | Total number of accounts to recover from the wallet (default 1) |
List validator accounts
You can list all validator accounts in your HD wallet using the following command
./prysm.sh validator accounts list
Where you'll see the following output
INFO accounts: (wallet path) /Users/johndoe/Library/Eth2Validators/prysm-wallet-v2
Showing **1** validator account
Account 0 | personally-conscious-echidna
[validating public key] 0xa6669aa0381c06470b9a6faf8abf4194ad5148a62e461cbef5a6bc4d292026f58b992c4cf40e50552d301cef19da75b9
[validating private key] 0x50cabc13435fcbde9d240fe720aff84f8557a6c1c445211b904f1a9620668241
You can view the deposit_data needed to send 32ETH to the Ethereum validator deposit contract
You can also run the accounts list command non-interactively by using the following command line flags, which are also viewable by typing ./prysm.sh validator accounts list --help.
| Flag | Usage |
|---|---|
--wallet-dir | Path to a wallet directory (default: "$HOME/Eth2Validators/prysm-wallet-v2"). |
--wallet-password-file | Path to plain-text file containing your wallet's password. |
--show-private-keys | Display the private keys for validator accounts. |