Keys and Addresses

Keys

We are now going to create payment keys, staking keys, addresses as well as submitting a simple transaction.

Payment Keys

Let's start by creating a couple directories to house our keys and addresses.

danger

We are not following best practices here. If you are creating payment or other key pairs that require security on mainnet or that interact with real funds, you MUST store the secret keys in an offline manner.

mkdir -p  ~/preview/{wallet1,wallet2}
cd ~/preview/wallet1

The first key pair we are going to create is the payment key pair for our "wallet1". This set of keys allow for the holding and transfer of ada and other native assets.

cardano-cli address key-gen \
--verification-key-file ~/preview/wallet1/payment.vkey \
--signing-key-file ~/preview/wallet1/payment.skey

Staking Keys

The next pair we are going to create is a staking key pair for wallet1. This allows us to generate an address using BOTH payment and staking keys that allows us to stake on the Cardano blockchain. We can derive an addres from just the payment keys, and that would be considered an Enterprise address, which cannot participate in staking.

cardano-cli conway stake-address key-gen \
--verification-key-file ~/preview/wallet1/stake.vkey \
--signing-key-file ~/preview/wallet1/stake.skey

Address

Next we are going to build an address using the verification (public) keys of the payment and stake key pairs we just created for wallet1.

cardano-cli address build \
--payment-verification-key-file ~/preview/wallet1/payment.vkey \
--stake-verification-key-file stake.vkey \
--testnet-magic 2 \
--out-file ~/preview/wallet1/payment.addr

Once this is done, concatenate the payment.addr file.

cat ~/preview/wallet1/payment.addr

info

Once you have generated your address for Wallet1, please use the Faucet to request some test ADA to play around with.

Wallet 2

Let's move onto the next step and create our second "wallet", wallet2

cd ~/preview/wallet2

This time, we are going to create a simple Enterprise address without the ability to participate in staking.

First, the payment key pair again.

cardano-cli address key-gen \
--verification-key-file ~/preview/wallet2/payment.vkey \
--signing-key-file ~/preview/wallet2/payment.skey

Enterprise Address

From here, we simply build the address using our verification key file.

cardano-cli address build \
--payment-verification-key-file ~/preview/wallet2/payment.vkey \
--out-file ~/preview/wallet2/payment.addr \
--testnet-magic 2

Once you have requested tADA from the faucet (in wallet1), let's query the UTxOs belonging to your payment address.

cardano-cli query utxo --address $(cat ~/preview/wallet1/payment.addr) --testnet-magic 2

tip

This may take a second, don't panic.

You should see an output containing the TxHash, TxIx value, and the amount of ada contained on the UTxO in lovelaces.

note

1000000 lovelaces equals 1 ada. When using cardano-cli we will always input values in lovelaces

Once you confirm that your wallet has a valid UTxO with an amount of ada associated with it, we will craft and submit a simple transaction using cardano-cli.

First, let's make a directory to house our transaction files.

mkdir ~/preview/tx
cd ~/preview/tx

For this first transaction, we are going to send a small amount of ada from "wallet1" to "wallet2".

Let's build the transaction.

tip

Please ensure you replace the carroted utxo hash text and the txix text with your actual utxo information obtained form the query utxo command we did earlier.

cardano-cli conway transaction build \
--socket-path /home/n(x)/preview/socket/node.socket \
--testnet-magic 2 \
--tx-in <the utxo hash you want to consume>#<the txix of the utxo> \
--change-address $(cat /home/n(x)/preview/wallet1/payment.addr) \
--tx-out $(cat /home/n(x)/preview/wallet2/payment.addr)+10000000 \
--out-file ~/preview/tx/tx1.raw

You should see at the bottom of the command an Estimated fee in lovelace for the transaction.

Once we have the transaction file build (tx1.raw), let's sign the transaction with the wallet1 payment.skey.

cardano-cli conway transaction sign --tx-body-file ~/preview/tx/tx1.raw \
--signing-key-file ~/preview/wallet1/payment.skey \
--out-file ~/preview/tx/tx1.signed

Once we have signed the transaction, it's time to submit!

cardano-cli conway transaction submit --tx-file ~/preview/tx/tx1.signed \
--socket-path /home/n(x)/preview/socket/node.socket \
--testnet-magic 2

If all was done correctly, you will be greeted with a success notification.

Let's now check the addresses of wallet1 and wallet2 to see what UTxOs they now contain.

cardano-cli query utxo --address $(cat ~/preview/wallet1/payment.addr) --testnet-magic 2

and for wallet2

cardano-cli query utxo --address $(cat ~/preview/wallet2/payment.addr) --testnet-magic 2

What do you notice?

info

At this point, we have created a transaction with cardano-cli in the simplest possible way. However, we can add to what we have just done.

Extra credit exercises:

• Create a wallet3
• Send 10 ada each to wallet3 and wallet2 from wallet1, consuming a single UTxO
• Send 10 ada each from wallet1 and from wallet2 to wallet3 (20 ada total) in a single transaction
• Create a transaction using build-raw instead of build (you will need to manually calculate fee, lovelaces, change, ttl, etc.)

If you want to try to build a tx with build-raw follow the instructions here: https://developers.cardano.org/docs/operate-a-stake-pool/register-stake-address