Paper Wallet
This document describes how to create and use a paper wallet with the Renec CLI tools.
We do not intend to advise on how to securely create or manage paper wallets. Please research the security concerns carefully.
Overview#
Renec provides a key generation tool to derive keys from BIP39-compliant seed phrases. Renec CLI commands for running a validator and staking tokens all support keypair input via seed phrases.
Paper Wallet Usage#
Renec commands can be run without ever saving a keypair to disk on a machine. If avoiding writing a private key to disk is a security concern of yours, you've come to the right place.
Even using this secure input method, it's still possible that a private key gets written to disk by unencrypted memory swaps. It is the user's responsibility to protect against this scenario.
Before You Begin#
Check your installation#
Check that renec-keygen is installed correctly by running:
Creating a Paper Wallet#
Using the renec-keygen tool, it is possible to generate new seed phrases as
well as derive a keypair from an existing seed phrase and (optional) passphrase.
The seed phrase and passphrase can be used together as a paper wallet. As long
as you keep your seed phrase and passphrase stored safely, you can use them to
access your account.
For more information about how seed phrases work, review this Bitcoin Wiki page.
Seed Phrase Generation#
Generating a new keypair can be done using the renec-keygen new command. The
command will generate a random seed phrase, ask you to enter an optional
passphrase, and then will display the derived public key and the generated seed
phrase for your paper wallet.
After copying down your seed phrase, you can use the public key derivation instructions to verify that you have not made any errors.
If the
--no-outfileflag is omitted, the default behavior is to write the keypair to~/.config/renec/id.json, resulting in a file system wallet.
The output of this command will display a line like this:
The value shown after pubkey: is your wallet address.
Note: In working with paper wallets and file system wallets, the terms "pubkey" and "wallet address" are sometimes used interchangably.
For added security, increase the seed phrase word count using the
--word-countargument
For full usage details, run:
Public Key Derivation#
Public keys can be derived from a seed phrase and a passphrase if you choose to
use one. This is useful for using an offline-generated seed phrase to derive a
valid public key. The renec-keygen pubkey command will walk you through how
to use your seed phrase (and a passphrase if you chose to use one) as a signer
with the renec command-line tools using the prompt URI scheme.
Note that you could potentially use different passphrases for the same seed phrase. Each unique passphrase will yield a different keypair.
The renec-keygen tool uses the same BIP39 standard English word list as it
does to generate seed phrases. If your seed phrase was generated with another
tool that uses a different word list, you can still use renec-keygen, but
will need to pass the --skip-seed-phrase-validation argument and forego this
validation.
After entering your seed phrase with renec-keygen pubkey prompt:// the console
will display a string of base-58 characters. This is the derived renec BIP44 wallet address
associated with your seed phrase.
Copy the derived address to a USB stick for easy usage on networked computers
If needed, you can access the legacy, raw keypair's pubkey by instead passing the ASK keyword:
A common next step is to check the balance of the account associated with a public key
For full usage details, run:
Hierarchical Derivation#
The renec-cli supports
BIP32 and
BIP44
hierarchical derivation of private keys from your seed phrase and passphrase by
adding either the ?key= query string or the ?full-path= query string.
By default, prompt: will derive renec's base derivation path m/44'/501'. To
derive a child key, supply the ?key=<ACCOUNT>/<CHANGE> query string.
To use a derivation path other than renec's standard BIP44, you can supply ?full-path=m/<PURPOSE>/<COIN_TYPE>/<ACCOUNT>/<CHANGE>.
Because Renec uses Ed25519 keypairs, as per
SLIP-0010 all
derivation-path indexes will be promoted to hardened indexes -- eg.
?key=0'/0', ?full-path=m/44'/2017'/0'/1' -- regardless of whether ticks are
included in the query-string input.
Verifying the Keypair#
To verify you control the private key of a paper wallet address, use
renec-keygen verify:
where <PUBKEY> is replaced with the wallet address and the keyword prompt://
tells the command to prompt you for the keypair's seed phrase; key and
full-path query-strings accepted. Note that for security reasons, your seed
phrase will not be displayed as you type. After entering your seed phrase, the
command will output "Success" if the given public key matches the keypair
generated from your seed phrase, and "Failed" otherwise.
Checking Account Balance#
All that is needed to check an account balance is the public key of an account. To retrieve public keys securely from a paper wallet, follow the Public Key Derivation instructions on an air gapped computer. Public keys can then be typed manually or transferred via a USB stick to a networked machine.
Next, configure the renec CLI tool to
connect to a particular cluster:
Finally, to check the balance, run the following command:
Creating Multiple Paper Wallet Addresses#
You can create as many wallet addresses as you like. Simply re-run the steps in Seed Phrase Generation or Public Key Derivation to create a new address. Multiple wallet addresses can be useful if you want to transfer tokens between your own accounts for different purposes.
Support#
Check out our Wallet Support Page for ways to get help.