Create Development Wallet

Overview

Wallets store public-private key pairs, which are needed for signing operations performed on the blockchain. They can be accessed through the use of clio command line tool. This section explains how to create, manage, and unlock wallets using the clio CLI, including generating and importing keys into wallets. For more information on clio commands and usage, refer to clio's CLI Reference.

Create a Wallet

To create a wallet using clio, you can either print the password to the console or save it in a specific file. For simplicity and recommended only for development, use the --to-console option:

clio wallet create --to-console

For production environments, it is safer to use the --file option to avoid having your wallet password recorded in your bash history.

clio wallet create --file my-secret-pass.txt

In both cases, ensure you save the password securely, as it will be needed later in the tutorial.

Note the location of my-secret-pass.txt. You will need it later.

Open the Wallet

Wallets are closed by default when starting a kiod instance, to begin, run the following

clio wallet open

Run the following to return a list of wallets.

clio wallet list

and it will return

Wallets:
[
  "default"
]

Unlock a Wallet

The kiod wallet(s) have been opened, but is still locked.

clio wallet unlock

You will be prompted for your wallet password you saved earlier, paste it and press enter. You could also use a one-liner below:

clio wallet unlock --password $(cat /path/to/password_file)

Execute the command below:

clio wallet list

This should output the following result:

Wallets:
[
  "default *"
]

The asterisk (*) next to the name means that the wallet is currently unlocked.

Import keys into your wallet​

To generating a key pair directly within the wallet, you could use clio wallet create_key command.

clio wallet create_key

Output:

Created new private key with a public key of: "SYS8PEJ5FM42xLpHK...X6PymQu97KrGDJQY5Y"

IMPORTANT

Save the public key somewhere safe as you would need it in the upcoming tutorials.

You could set it as environment variable:

export PUBLIC_KEY=public-key-value

Import the Development Key​

Every new Wire chain has a default system user called sysio. This account is used to setup the chain by deploying system contracts that handle essential functions related to resource management, governance and consensus of the chain. Every new Wire chain also comes with a development key, and this key is the same and it is used to sign transactions on behalf of the sysio user.

clio wallet import

You'll be prompted for a private key, enter the sysio development key provided below:

5KQwrPbwdL6PhXujxW37FSSQZ1JiwsST4cqQzDeyXtP79zkvFD3

WARNING

Never use the development key for a production account! Doing so will most certainly result in the loss of access to your account.