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Paper Wallet Usage |
Solana 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 solana-keygen
is installed correctly by running:
solana-keygen --version
Creating a Paper Wallet
Using the solana-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 solana-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.
solana-keygen new --no-outfile
If the
--no-outfile
flag is omitted, the default behavior is to write the keypair to~/.config/solana/id.json
, resulting in a file system wallet
The output of this command will display a line like this:
pubkey: 9ZNTfG4NyQgxy2SWjSiQoUyBPEvXT2xo7fKc5hPYYJ7b
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-count
argument
For full usage details run:
solana-keygen new --help
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 solana-keygen pubkey
command will walk you
through entering your seed phrase and a passphrase if you chose to use one.
solana-keygen pubkey ASK
Note that you could potentially use different passphrases for the same seed phrase. Each unique passphrase will yield a different keypair.
The solana-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 solana-keygen
, but
will need to pass the --skip-seed-phrase-validation
argument and forego this
validation.
solana-keygen pubkey ASK --skip-seed-phrase-validation
After entering your seed phrase with solana-keygen pubkey ASK
the console
will display a string of base-58 character. This is the wallet address
associated with your seed phrase.
Copy the derived address to a USB stick for easy usage on networked computers
A common next step is to check the balance of the account associated with a public key
For full usage details run:
solana-keygen pubkey --help
Verifying the Keypair
To verify you control the private key of a paper wallet address, use
solana-keygen verify
:
solana-keygen verify <PUBKEY> ASK
where <PUBKEY>
is replaced with the wallet address and they keyword ASK
tells the
command to prompt you for the keypair's seed phrase. 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 solana
CLI tool to
connect to a particular cluster:
solana config set --url <CLUSTER URL> # (i.e. https://api.mainnet-beta.solana.com)
Finally, to check the balance, run the following command:
solana balance <PUBKEY>
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.