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Creating and Managing Accounts

There are several ways to generate account credentials using the Go SDK. You can use:

  • aptos.NewEd25519Account()
  • aptos.NewSecp256k1Account()
  • aptos.NewEd25519SingleSenderAccount()
  • aptos.NewAccountFromSigner()

Account.NewEd25519Account() is the most commonly used method to create keys for a new account. It defaults to ED25519 key types, but you can also specify which signing scheme you would prefer like so:

// To derive an ed25519 account
account1 := aptos.NewEd25519Account()
 
// To derive a secp256k1 account
account2 := aptos.NewSecp256k1Account()

Once you have generated credentials, you must fund it for the network to know it exists.

In devnet environments this can be done with a faucet by running the following command:

fund.go
client, err = aptos.NewClient(aptos.DevnetConfig)
if err != nil {
  panic("Failed to create client:" + err.Error())
}
 
// Fund an account with 1 Devnet APT
client.Fund(account1.Address, 100_000_000)

On testnet you can mint at the mint page.

Other Ways To Represent Accounts

If you have a private key, or equivalent representation, you can use that to create an Account struct to manage those credentials while using the Go SDK.

Here are several examples that show how to do so with specific encoding schemes.

Derive an account from private key

The SDK supports deriving an account from a private key with NewAccountFromSigner() method. In addition, this method supports deriving an account from a private key and account address. This method uses a local calculation and therefore is used to derive an Account that has not had its authentication key rotated.

// to derive an account with a Ed25519 key scheme
privateKey := &aptos.Ed25519PrivateKey{}
err := privateKey.FromHex(privateKeyHex)
if err != nil {
  panic("Failed to parse private key:" + err.Error())
}
account := aptos.NewAccountFromSigner(privateKey)
 
// to derive an account with a Single Sender Ed25519 key scheme
privateKey := &aptos.Ed25519PrivateKey{}
err := privateKey.FromHex(privateKeyHex)
if err != nil {
  panic("Failed to parse private key:" + err.Error())
}
singleSigner := &crypto.SingleSigner{Signer: privateKey}
account := aptos.NewAccountFromSigner(singleSigner)
 
// to derive an account with a Single Sender Secp256k1 key scheme
privateKey := &aptos.Secp256k1PrivateKey{}
err := privateKey.FromHex(privateKeyHex)
if err != nil {
  panic("Failed to parse private key:" + err.Error())
}
singleSigner := &crypto.SingleSigner{Signer: privateKey}
account := aptos.NewAccountFromSigner(singleSigner)
 
// to derive an account with a private key and account address
address := &aptos.AccountAddress{}
err := address.ParseStringRelaxed(addressHex)
if err != nil {
  panic("Failed to parse address:" + err.Error())
}
privateKey := &aptos.Ed25519PrivateKey{}
err := privateKey.FromHex(privateKeyHex)
if err != nil {
  panic("Failed to parse private key:" + err.Error())
}
account := aptos.NewAccountFromSigner(privateKey, address.AuthKey())