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Generating addresses

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Ethereum

Overview​

On Ethereum, there are two types of addresses: wallet addresses for holding assets and contract addresses. Wallet addresses are public accounts that can send and receive ETH tokens. Contract addresses refer to a smart contract that has been executed on Ethereum and the transactions associated with that contract.

Wallet and contract addresses can be queried using the EVM RPC canister.

Canister ETH addresses​

To create an ETH address for your canister, you will need to a public key controlled by your canister. An example in Rust can be found below:

/// Converts the public key bytes to an Ethereum address with a checksum.
fn pubkey_bytes_to_address(pubkey_bytes: &[u8]) -> String {
    use k256::elliptic_curve::sec1::ToEncodedPoint;

    let key =
        PublicKey::from_sec1_bytes(pubkey_bytes).expect("failed to parse the public key as SEC1");
    let point = key.to_encoded_point(false);
    // we re-encode the key to the decompressed representation.
    let point_bytes = point.as_bytes();
    assert_eq!(point_bytes[0], 0x04);

    let hash = keccak256(&point_bytes[1..]);

    ethers_core::utils::to_checksum(&Address::from_slice(&hash[12..32]), None)
}

Next steps​

You can use this address to make Ethereum transactions from your canister.

Learn how to sign Ethereum transactions.