How To Create Key Pairs

Goal

Create a keypair consisting of a public and a private key for signing transactions in the EOSIO blockchain.

Before you begin

Before you follow the steps to create a new key pair, make sure the following items are fulfilled:

• Install the currently supported version of cleos

[[info | Note]] | The cleos tool is bundled with the EOSIO software. Installing EOSIO will also install the cleos tool.

• Acquire functional understanding of asymmetric cryptography (public and private keypair) in the context of blockchain

Steps

To create a keypair and print the result to the console:

cleos create key --to-console

Example Output

cleos create key --to-console
Private key: 5KPzrqNMJdr6AX6abKg*******************************cH
Public key: EOS4wSiQ2jbYGrqiiKCm8oWR88NYoqnmK4nNL1RCtSQeSFkGtqsNc

To create a keypair and save it to a file:

cleos create key --file FILE_TO_SAVEKEY

Where: FILE_TO_SAVEKEY = name of the file

Example Output

cleos create key --file pw.txt         
saving keys to pw.txt

To view the saved keypair in the file:

cat pw.txt
Private key: 5K7************************************************
Public key: EOS71k3WdpLDeqeyqVRAAxwpz6TqXwDo9Brik5dQhdvvpeTKdNT59