Keys

Guide for obtaining an ECDSA key as a Seeker.

We are currently requiring Seekers to identify themselves in the network when sending requests. These requests are signed using an ECDSA key, which you must get whitelisted by submitting a form application (linked below).

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ECDSA Keypair

You can generate a new ECDSA key pair or import an existing one.

A passphrase will be prompted from the user to securely store the key. Keys are saved using a user-provided name, which will be used to refer to them in other CLI commands.

Generate

Generate a new key with a given name:

NAME=ecdsa.seeker

fermah-seek key gen --name $NAME --key-type ecdsa

Import

Import a private key using either a path to an existing private key file, or the hex-encoded private key string itself, 0x hex prefix is optional.

NAME=ecdsa.seeker
KEY=hex_ecdsa_private_key

fermah-operator key import --key-type ecdsa --name $NAME --private-key $KEY

Output will include the public key. This will be used as the identifier to to get you whitelisted. Private key will be saved to ~/.fermah/keys/name.jsonaccording to the Web3 Secret Storage Definition.

Reference

Argument	Description	Required
--name	unique name for key	yes
--key-type	ecdsa or bls	yes
--password-stdin	read password from stdin	no
--no-pw-confirm	do not ask for password confirmation	no
--no-password	force no password for keystore	no

Example Keystore

{
  "plain": {
    "crypto": {
      "ciphertext": "59c6995e998f97a5a0044966f0945389dc9e86dae88c7a8412f4603b6b78690d"
    },
    "address": "0x70997970c51812dc3a010c7d01b50e0d17dc79c8",
    "id": "cc706dea-d20c-44b1-8f64-b5e8ce43cc7f",
    "version": 1
  }
}

Either "plain" or "encrypted" version will be saved depending on password usage. We follow Web3 Secret Storage Definition.

Whitelist Keys

Once the keys are generated, you can submit the ECDSA public key and other details in the Seeker Application Form (Holesky) for whitelisting. We will notify you once your key has been registered.