File System Wallet

File System Wallet

This document describes how to create and use a file system wallet with the Ethereal CLI tools. A file system wallet exists as an unencrypted keypair file on your computer system's filesystem.

File system wallets are the least secure method of storing ETRL tokens. Storing large amounts of tokens in a file system wallet is not recommended.

Before you Begin

Make sure you have installed the Ethereal Command Line Tools

Generate a File System Wallet Keypair

Use Ethereal command-line tool ethereal-keygen to generate keypair files. For example, run the following from a command-line shell:

mkdir ~/my-ethereal-wallet

ethereal-keygen new --outfile ~/my-ethereal-wallet/my-keypair.json

This file contains your unencrypted keypair. In fact, even if you specify a password, that password applies to the recovery seed phrase, not the file. Do not share this file with others. Anyone with access to this file will have access to all tokens sent to its public key. Instead, you should share only its public key. To display its public key, run:

ethereal-keygen pubkey ~/my-ethereal-wallet/my-keypair.json

It will output a string of characters, such as:

ErRr1caKzK8L8nn4xmEWtimYRiTCAZXjBtVphuZ5vMKy

This is the public key corresponding to the keypair in ~/my-ethereal-wallet/my-keypair.json. The public key of the keypair file is your wallet address.

Verify your Address against your Keypair file

To verify you hold the private key for a given address, use ethereal-keygen verify:

ethereal-keygen verify <PUBKEY> ~/my-ethereal-wallet/my-keypair.json

where <PUBKEY> is replaced with your wallet address. The command will output "Success" if the given address matches the the one in your keypair file, and "Failed" otherwise.

Creating Multiple File System Wallet Addresses

You can create as many wallet addresses as you like. Simply re-run the steps in Generate a File System Wallet and make sure to use a new filename or path with the --outfile argument. Multiple wallet addresses can be useful if you want to transfer tokens between your own accounts for different purposes.