Hotkeys generation
Overview
This page will explain how to generate a hotkey for neuron management.
The recommended way to get hotkeys is to programmatically
generate them using the same process used in the public ic repository.
However, it is possible to generate hotkeys manually as described
below.
This page is a step-by-step guide with some examples showing the data format to expect.
Manual process
The manual hotkey generation process consists in generating a PEM file, then deriving the corresponding private and public keys.
Generate PEM
To generate the keys, start with generating a private PEM file:
openssl genpkey -algorithm ed25519 -outform PEM -out private.pem
Example output:
-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
MC4CAQAwBQYDK2VwBCIEIHAOt4HGrNdcIFhBy7N9p6iq3iRowd4NZjDZ8aaaDCcX
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----
Then create the public PEM from it:
openssl pkey -in private.pem -pubout > public.pem
Example output:
-----BEGIN PUBLIC KEY-----
MCowBQYDK2VwAyEA4JKtE2KNVUTo96cl202FgWv5ctwP7f1ds1O73PZ6+VE=
-----END PUBLIC KEY-----
Generating hex key representation
Create the private DER file:
openssl pkey -inform pem -outform der -in private.pem -out private.der
Create the public DER file:
openssl pkey -inform pem -outform der -in private.pem -out public.der -pubout
Hex representation
The generated DER files are in a binary format not intended to be readable by humans. But you can get a hex representation of both keys:
Private key
xxd -p private.der
Example output:
302e020100300506032b657004220420700eb781c6acd75c205841cbb37d
a7a8aade2468c1de0d6630d9f1a69a0c2717
Public key
xxd -p public.der
302a300506032b6570032100e092ad13628d5544e8f7a725db4d85816bf9
72dc0fedfd5db353bbdcf67af951
You need to keep only the last 32 bytes of the public key:
xxd -s 12 -c 32 -p public.der
Example output:
e092ad13628d5544e8f7a725db4d85816bf972dc0fedfd5db353bbdcf67af951
This is the public key you can use in Rosetta operations to identify your hotkey!
Frequently asked questions
Why do I get "Algorithm ed25519 not found" while generating the PEM file?
The version of OpenSSL included in MacOS doesn't support ed25519 by default. You may have to install another version of OpenSSL (for example through brew), or run the command from a Linux machine.