security//cryptography//key pair

A key pair is the private key, the public key and the address that identify an account on the chain.

A key pair is the private key, the public key and the address that identify an account on the chain.

Private keyA 256-bit random number, generated off-chain, never shared and never sent over the network.

Public keyDerived from the private key by elliptic curve multiplication, a one-way function.

AddressThe last 20 bytes of keccak256(publicKey), the short form used on-chain.

The same seed string always gives the same deterministic key pair (keccak256(utf8Bytes(seed))), which is useful for reproducible test environments; an HD wallet does the same at scale, deriving a whole tree of key pairs from one master seed. Two nodes sharing the same private key are in irreconcilable conflict (duplicate nonces, indistinguishable signatures).