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Accounts and Keys

This document covers the basics of Constellation accounts.

The Key Trio

In the Constellation Network, accounts are composed of a key trio consisting of the private key, public key, and an address.

  • Private key: The private key is a highly confidential piece of information that plays a crucial role in authenticating an address to the network. With the private key, you can execute sensitive actions like signing messages or sending transactions.
  • Public key: The public key serves as a unique identifier for nodes on the network and is derived from the private key. It is crucial for establishing trust relationships between nodes, enabling secure communication, and verifying digital signatures.
  • Address: The address is the public-facing component of the Key Trio and represents a public wallet address for receiving payments or other digital transactions. It can be derived from either the private or public key and is widely used for peer-to-peer transactions. Sharing your address with others enables them to send you payments while keeping your private key confidential.

Address Format

info

📢 Constellation addresses are case sensitive!

Addresses consist of 40 characters divided into three parts.

  • Prefix: the characters “DAG”.
  • Check digit: A single decimal calculated from the digits in the Hash.
  • Hash: The base58 encoded hash of the first 36 characters of an account public key.

The Check Digit is computed by taking the sum of all digit characters in the Hash. If the sum is greater than 9, the sum is reduced to a single digit by taking the remainder of the sum divided by 9.

For example, in the address DAG5poQ31KFjikEgLoqnf9CQR2KVYv3pfxV5NQZY the Check Digit can be calculated in the following way:

3+1+9+2+3+5 = 23
23 % 9 = 5

The Hash can be derived from the public key in hex format in the following way:

const PKCS_PREFIX = '3056301006072a8648ce3d020106052b8104000a03420004';

function deriveHash (publicKeyHex: string) {
    const prefixed = PKCS_PREFIX + publicKeyHex;

    const sha256String = sha256(publicKeyHex);
  const hash = bs58.encode(sha256String);
  
  return hash.slice(hash.length - 36, hash.length);
}

The address is constructed of the three components concatenated together: 

address = "DAG" + checkDigit + hash

Signing Messages

Constellation Network supports ECDSA signatures on secp256k1.

To sign messages, a sha512 hash of the message is signed with the private key

function sign (privateKey: string, msg: string) {
  const sha512Hash = sha512(msg);
  
  const signature = secp.sign(sha512Hash, privateKey);

  return Buffer.from(signature).toString('hex'); 
}

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