Accounts

Crypto Wallets (or Accounts) can be created and represented in unique ways on different blockchains. For developers who interface with account types on Guru, e.g. during wallet integration on their dApp frontend, it is therefore important to understand that accounts on Guru are implemented to be compatible with Ethereum type addresses.

Prerequisite Readings

• Cosmos SDK Accounts
• Ethereum Accounts

Creating Accounts

To create one account you can either create a private key, a keystore file (a private key protected by a password), or a mnemonic phrase (a string of words that can access multiple private keys).

Aside from having different security features, the biggest difference between each of these is that a private key or keystore file only creates one account. Creating a mnemonic phrase gives you control of many accounts, all accessible with that same phrase.

Cosmos blockchains, support creating accounts with mnemonic phrases, otherwise known as hierarchical deterministic key generation (HD keys). This allows the user to create accounts on multiple blockchains without having to manage multiple secrets.

HD keys generate addresses by taking the mnemonic phrase and combining it with a piece of information called a derivation path. Blockchains can differ in which derivation path they support. To access all accounts from an mnemonic phrase on a blockchain, it is therefore important to use that blockchain's specific derivation path.

Representing Accounts

The terms "account" and "address" are often used interchangeably to describe crypto wallets. In the Cosmos SDK, an account designates a pair of public key (PubKey) and private key (PrivKey). The derivation path defines what the private key, public key, and address would be.

The PubKey can be derived to generate various addresses in different formats, which are used to identify users (among other parties) in the application. A common address form for Cosmos chains is the bech32 format (e.g. guru1...). Addresses are also associated with messages to identify the sender of the message.

The PrivKey is used to generate digital signatures to prove that an address associated with the PrivKey approved of a given message. The proof is performed by applying a cryptographic scheme to the PrivKey, known as Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), to generate a PubKey that is compared with the address in the message.

Guru Accounts

Guru defines its own custom Account type to implement a HD wallet that is compatible with Ethereum type addresses. It uses Ethereum's ECDSA secp256k1 curve for keys (eth_secp265k1) and satisfies the EIP84 for full BIP44 paths. This cryptographic curve is not to be confused with Bitcoin's ECDSA secp256k1 curve.

The root HD path for Evmos-based accounts is m/44'/60'/0'/0. Guru uses the Coin type 60 to support Ethereum type accounts, unlike many other Cosmos chains that use Coin type 118 (list of coin types)

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.

Guru uses the following HRP (human readable prefix) as the base HRP:

Network	Mainnet	Testnet
Guru	guru	guru

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

• 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	guru	gurupub	eth_secp256k1	20	33 (compressed)
Validator Operator	guruvaloper	guruvaloperpub	eth_secp256k1	20	33 (compressed)
Consensus Nodes	guruvalcons	guruvalconspub	ed25519	20	32

Address formats for clients

EthAccount can be represented in both Bech32 (guru1...) 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): guru10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwggsdaj
• Address (EIP55 Hex): 0x7CB61D4117AE31A12E393A1CFA3BAC666481D02E
• Compressed Public Key: {"@type":"/cosmos.evm.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"A5LuwPzowaWjWd3y1cekZnOLw/w4twRtgbgU05gR1a/d"}

Address conversion

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

Bech32

$ gurud debug addr guru10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwggsdaj

Address: [124 182 29 65 23 174 49 161 46 57 58 28 250 59 172 102 100 129 208 46]
Address (hex): 7CB61D4117AE31A12E393A1CFA3BAC666481D02E
Bech32 Acc: guru10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwggsdaj
Bech32 Val: guruvaloper10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwrdtkut
Bech32 Con: guruvalcons10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwh7c2s2

Hex

$ gurud debug addr 7CB61D4117AE31A12E393A1CFA3BAC666481D02E

Address: [124 182 29 65 23 174 49 161 46 57 58 28 250 59 172 102 100 129 208 46]
Address (hex): 7CB61D4117AE31A12E393A1CFA3BAC666481D02E
Bech32 Acc: guru10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwggsdaj
Bech32 Val: guruvaloper10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwrdtkut
Bech32 Con: guruvalcons10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwh7c2s2

Key output

tip

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

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

Accounts

$ gurud keys show mykey --bech acc

- address: guru10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwggsdaj
  name: mykey
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.evm.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"A5LuwPzowaWjWd3y1cekZnOLw/w4twRtgbgU05gR1a/d"}'
  type: local

Validator

$ gurud keys show mykey --bech val

- address: guruvaloper10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwrdtkut
  name: mykey
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.evm.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"A5LuwPzowaWjWd3y1cekZnOLw/w4twRtgbgU05gR1a/d"}'
  type: local

Consensus

$ gurud keys show mykey --bech cons

- address: guruvalcons10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwh7c2s2
  name: mykey
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.evm.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey","key":"A5LuwPzowaWjWd3y1cekZnOLw/w4twRtgbgU05gR1a/d"}'
  type: local

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)
$ gurud q auth account $(gurud keys show mykey -a) -o text

account:
  type: /cosmos.auth.v1beta1.BaseAccount
  value:
    address: guru10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwggsdaj
    public_key:
      type: /cosmos.evm.crypto.v1.ethsecp256k1.PubKey
      value:
        key: A5LuwPzowaWjWd3y1cekZnOLw/w4twRtgbgU05gR1a/d
    sequence: "1"

Cosmos gRPC and REST

# GET /cosmos/auth/v1beta1/accounts/{address}
curl -X GET "http://localhost:10337/cosmos/auth/v1beta1/accounts/guru10jmp6sgh4cc6zt3e8gw05wavvejgr5pwggsdaj" -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