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Start EthSigner with multiple signing keys

EthSigner supports transaction signing using multiple keys.

This tutorial covers configuring multiple keys using V3 keystore files. To configure keys for HashiCorp Vault or Azure Key Vault, update the TOML configuration file accordingly.

note

Multiple signing keys is not the same as multi-tenancy. EthSigner does not support multi-tenancy.

Multi-tenancy is a feature in Hyperledger Besu and Tessera allowing multiple participants in a privacy network to use the same Besu and Tessera node.

Prerequisites​

note

The Ethereum client used in this documentation is Hyperledger Besu but EthSigner can be used with any Ethereum client.

Start Besu​

Start Besu with the --rpc-http-port option set to 8590.

besu --network=dev --miner-enabled --miner-coinbase=0xfe3b557e8fb62b89f4916b721be55ceb828dbd73 --rpc-http-cors-origins="all" --host-allowlist=* --rpc-http-enabled --rpc-http-port=8590 --data-path=/Users/me/Datadir

Create password and key files​

You can create one or more password and V3 Keystore key files. Create a text file containing the password for the V3 Keystore key file to be created (for example, passwordFile).

Use the web3.js library to create a key file where:

  • <AccountPrivateKey> is the account private key EthSigner uses to sign transactions.
  • <Password> is the key file password being created. The password must match the password saved in the password file created previously (passwordFile in this example).
Example
const Web3 = require("web3");

// Web3 initialization (should point to the JSON-RPC endpoint)
const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider("http://127.0.0.1:8590"));

var V3KeyStore = web3.eth.accounts.encrypt("<AccountPrivateKey>", "<Password>");
console.log(JSON.stringify(V3KeyStore));
process.exit();

Copy and paste the example JS script to a file (for example, createKeyFile.js) and replace the placeholders.

Use the JS script to display the text for the key file:

node createKeyFile.js

Copy and paste the text to a file (for example, keyFile). The file is your V3 Keystore key file. Each key file requires a TOML file.

Create the TOML file​

Create the TOML file that contains the settings to access the key file. Each key that signs transactions requires a TOML file.

The file name must use the format [<prefix>]<accountAddress>.toml. Remove the 0x portion of the account address. For example, 78e6e236592597c09d5c137c2af40aecd42d12a2.toml.

[metadata]
createdAt = 2019-11-05T08:15:30-05:00
description = "File based configuration"

[signing]
type = "file-based-signer"
key-file = "/Users/me/project/keyFile"
password-file = "/Users/me/project/passwordFile"

Start EthSigner​

Start EthSigner with options:

  • chain-id is the chain ID specified in the Besu genesis file.
  • downstream-http-port is the rpc-http-port specified for Besu (8590 in this example).
  • directory is the location of TOML file created above.
Start EthSigner
ethsigner --chain-id=2018 --downstream-http-port=8590 multikey-signer --directory=/Users/me/project

If using a cloud-based Ethereum client such as Infura, specify the endpoint using the --downstream-http-host and --downstream-http-path command line options.

ethsigner --chain-id=5 --downstream-http-host=goerli.infura.io \
--downstream-http-path=/v3/d0e63ca5bb1e4eef2284422efbc51a56 --downstream-http-port=443 \
--downstream-http-tls-enabled multikey-signer --directory=/Users/me/project

Confirm EthSigner is running​

Use the upcheck endpoint to confirm EthSigner is running.

info
curl -X GET http://127.0.0.1:8545/upcheck

Confirm EthSigner is passing requests to Besu​

Request the current block number using eth_blockNumber with the EthSigner JSON-RPC endpoint (8545 in this example):

curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_blockNumber","params":[],"id":51}' http://127.0.0.1:8545

You can now use EthSigner to sign transactions with the keys stored in the V3 Keystore key files.