Cryptography and the Solana Network

Summary #

• A keypair is a matching pair of public key and secret key.
• The public key is used as an “address” that points to an account on the Solana network. A public key can be shared with anyone.
• The secret key is used to verify authority over the account. As the name suggests, you should always keep secret keys secret.
• @solana/web3.js provides helper functions for creating a brand new keypair, or for constructing a keypair using an existing secret key.

Lesson #

In this lesson, we will explore the basics of cryptography and how it's applied within the Solana ecosystem.

Symmetric and Asymmetric Cryptography #

'Cryptography' the study of hiding information. There are two main types of cryptography you'll encounter day to day:

Symmetric Cryptography is where the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt. It's hundreds of years old and has been used by everyone from the ancient Egyptians to Queen Elizabeth I.

There's a variety of symmetric cryptography algorithms, but the most common you'll see today are AES and Chacha20.

Asymmetric Cryptography

• Asymmetric cryptography - also called 'public key cryptography' was developed in the 1970s. In asymmetric cryptography, participants have pairs of keys (or keypairs). Each keypair consists of a secret key and a public key. Asymmetric encryption works differently from symmetric encryption, and can do different things:

• Encryption: if it's encrypted with a public key, only the secret key from the same keypair can be used to read it

• Signatures: if it's encrypted with a secret key, the public key from the same keypair can be used to prove the secret key holder signed it.

• You can even use asymmetric cryptography to work out a good key for symmetric cryptography! This is called key exchange, where you use your public keys and the recipient's public key to come up with a 'session' key.

• There's a variety of asymmetric cryptography algorithms, but the most common you'll see today are variants of ECC or RSA.

Asymmetric encryption is very popular:

• Your bank card has a secret key inside it that's used to sign transactions.

  Your bank can confirm you made the transaction by checking them with the matching public key.

• Websites include a public key in their certificate. Your browser will use this public key to encrypt the data (like personal information, login details, and credit card numbers) it sends to the web page.

  The website has the matching private key so that the website can read the data.

• Your electronic passport was signed by the country that issued it to ensure the passport isn't forged.

  The electronic passport gates can confirm this using the public key of your issuing country.

• The messaging apps on your phone use key exchange to make a session key.

In short, cryptography is all around us. Solana, as well as other blockchains, are but one use of cryptography.

Solana uses public keys as addresses #

Solana wallet addresses

People participating in the Solana network have at least one keypair. In Solana:

• The public key is used as an “address” that points to an account on the Solana network. Even friendly names - like example.sol - point to addresses like dDCQNnDmNbFVi8cQhKAgXhyhXeJ625tvwsunRyRc7c8

• The secret key is used to verify authority over that keypair. If you have the secret key for an address, you control the tokens inside that address. For this reason, as the name suggests, you should always keep secret keys secret.

Using @solana/web3.js to make a keypair #

You can use the Solana blockchain from either the browser or node.js with the @solana/web3.js npm module. Set up a project how you normally would, then use npm to install @solana/web3.js

npm i @solana/web3.js@1

We'll cover a lot of web3.js gradually throughout this course, but you can also check out the official web3.js documentation.

To send tokens, send NFTS, or read and write data Solana, you'll need your own keypair. To make a new keypair, use the Keypair.generate() function from @solana/web3.js:

import { Keypair } from "@solana/web3.js";
 
const keypair = Keypair.generate();
 
console.log(`The public key is: `, keypair.publicKey.toBase58());
console.log(`The secret key is: `, keypair.secretKey);

Loading an existing keypair #

If you already have a keypair you'd like to use, you can load a Keypair from an existing secret key stored in the filesystem or an .env file. In node.js, the @solana-developers/helpers npm package includes some extra functions:

npm i @solana-developers/helpers

• To use an .env file use getKeypairFromEnvironment()
• To use a Solana CLI file use getKeypairFromFile()

import "dotenv/config";
import { getKeypairFromEnvironment } from "@solana-developers/helpers";
 
const keypair = getKeypairFromEnvironment("SECRET_KEY");

You know how to make and load keypairs! Let's practice what we've learned.

Lab #

In this lab we will learn about keypairs, and how to store secret keys securely on solana

Installation #

Make a new directory, install TypeScript, Solana web3.js and esrun:

mkdir generate-keypair
cd generate-keypair
npm init -y
npm install typescript @solana/web3.js@1 esrun @solana-developers/helpers@2

Make a new file called generate-keypair.ts

import { Keypair } from "@solana/web3.js";
const keypair = Keypair.generate();
console.log(`✅ Generated keypair!`);

Run npx esrun generate-keypair.ts. You should see the text:

✅ Generated keypair!

Each Keypair has a publicKey and secretKey property. Update the file:

import { Keypair } from "@solana/web3.js";
 
const keypair = Keypair.generate();
 
console.log(`The public key is: `, keypair.publicKey.toBase58());
console.log(`The secret key is: `, keypair.secretKey);
console.log(`✅ Finished!`);

Run npx esrun generate-keypair.ts. You should see the text:

The public key is:  764CksEAZvm7C1mg2uFmpeFvifxwgjqxj2bH6Ps7La4F
The secret key is:  Uint8Array(64) [
  (a long series of numbers)
]
✅ Finished!

Loading an existing keypair from an .env file #

To ensure that your secret key stays secure, we recommend injecting the secret key using a .env file:

Make a new file called .env with the contents of the key you made earlier:

SECRET_KEY="[(a series of numbers)]"

We can then load the keypair from the environment. Update generate-keypair.ts:

import "dotenv/config";
import { getKeypairFromEnvironment } from "@solana-developers/helpers";
 
const keypair = getKeypairFromEnvironment("SECRET_KEY");
 
console.log(
  `✅ Finished! We've loaded our secret key securely, using an env file!`,
);

Run npx esrun generate-keypair.ts. You should see the following result:

✅ Finished! We've loaded our secret key securely, using an env file!

We've now learned about keypairs, and how to store secret keys securely on Solana. In the next chapter, we'll use them!