Accounts

This document describes the in-built accounts system of Point Chain.

Pre-requisite Readings

• Cosmos SDK Accounts
• Ethereum Accounts

Point Chain Accounts

Point Chain 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 Point Chain-based accounts is m/44'/60'/0'/0.

Addresses and Public Keys

BIP-0173 defines a new format for segregated witness output addresses that contains a human-readable part that identifies the Bech32 usage. Point Chain uses the following HRP (human readable prefix) as the base HRP:

Network	Mainnet	Testnet
Point Chain	point	xpoint

There are 3 main types of HRP for the Addresses/PubKeys available by default on Point Chain:

• 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	point	pointpub	eth_secp256k1	20	33 (compressed)
Validator Operator	pointvaloper	pointvaloperpub	eth_secp256k1	20	33 (compressed)
Consensus Nodes	pointvalcons	pointvalconspub	ed25519	20	32

Address formats for clients

EthAccount can be represented in both Bech32 (point1...) and hex (0x...) formats 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): point1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jj7mz2jw
• Address (EIP55 Hex): 0x91defC7fE5603DFA8CC9B655cF5772459BF10c6f
• Compressed Public Key: {"@type":"/ethermint.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"AsV5oddeB+hkByIJo/4lZiVUgXTzNfBPKC73cZ4K1YD2"}

Address conversion

The pointd debug addr <address> can be used to convert an address between hex and bech32 formats. For example:

Bech32

pointd debug addr point1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jj7mz2jw
  Address: [20 87 74 109 255 45 223 158 7 130 139 67 69 211 4 9 25 175 86 82]
  Address (hex): 14574A6DFF2DDF9E07828B4345D3040919AF5652
  Bech32 Acc: point1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jj7mz2jw
  Bech32 Val: pointvaloper1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jjn4d6nn

Hex

pointd debug addr 14574A6DFF2DDF9E07828B4345D3040919AF5652
  Address: [20 87 74 109 255 45 223 158 7 130 139 67 69 211 4 9 25 175 86 82]
  Address (hex): 14574A6DFF2DDF9E07828B4345D3040919AF5652
  Bech32 Acc: point1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jj7mz2jw
  Bech32 Val: pointvaloper1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jjn4d6nn

Key output

tip

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

We can use the keys show command of pointd with the flag --bech <type> (acc|val|cons) to obtain the addresses and keys as mentioned above,

Account

pointd keys show mykey --bech acc
- name: mykey
  type: local
  address: point1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jj7mz2jw
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/ethermint.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"AsV5oddeB+hkByIJo/4lZiVUgXTzNfBPKC73cZ4K1YD2"}'
  mnemonic: ""

Validator

pointd keys show mykey --bech val
- name: mykey
  type: local
  address: pointvaloper1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jjn4d6nn
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/ethermint.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"AsV5oddeB+hkByIJo/4lZiVUgXTzNfBPKC73cZ4K1YD2"}'
  mnemonic: ""

Consensus

pointd keys show mykey --bech cons
- name: mykey
  type: local
  address: pointvalcons1rllqa5d97n6zyjhy6cnscc7zu30zjn3f7wyj2n
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/ethermint.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"A/fVLgIqiLykFQxum96JkSOoTemrXD0tFaFQ1B0cpB2c"}'
  mnemonic: ""

::::

Querying an Account

You can query an account address using the CLI, gRPC or

Command Line Interface

# NOTE: the --output (-o) flag will define the output format in JSON or YAML (text)
pointd q auth account $(pointd keys show mykey -a) -o text
|
  '@type': /ethermint.types.v1.EthAccount
  base_account:
    account_number: "0"
    address: point1z3t55m0l9h0eupuz3dp5t5cypyv674jj7mz2jw
    pub_key:
      '@type': /ethermint.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey
      key: AsV5oddeB+hkByIJo/4lZiVUgXTzNfBPKC73cZ4K1YD2
    sequence: "1"
  code_hash: 0xc5d2460186f7233c927e7db2dcc703c0e500b653ca82273b7bfad8045d85a470

Cosmos gRPC and REST

# GET /cosmos/auth/v1beta1/accounts/{address}
curl -X GET "http://localhost:10337/cosmos/auth/v1beta1/accounts/point14au322k9munkmx5wrchz9q30juf5wjgz2cfqku" -H "accept: application/json"

JSON-RPC

To retrieve the Ethereum hex address using Web3, use the JSON-RPC eth_accounts or personal_listAccounts endpoints:

# 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:8545

curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"personal_listAccounts","params":[],"id":1}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" http://localhost:8545