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Creating/Importing a Bittensor Wallet

In Bittensor (like other cryptocurrency applications), a wallet is a tool for proving your identity, signing transactions, accessing your TAO, and managing your stake in subnets.

This page describes several different ways to instantiate your wallet keypairs into a wallet application, in order to interact with the Bittensor blockchain.

Recommended background reading:

• For an introduction to the core concepts, see wallets and keys in Bittensor.

• For discussion of security considerations about working with Bittensor wallets, see Coldkey and Hotkey Workstation Security.

tip

The most critical operational goal when handling Bittensor wallets is to avoid losing or leaking your seed phrase. Make sure you Handle your Seed Phrase/Mnemonic Securely.

Creating a wallet with btcli

Creating a coldkey-only wallet

Users that will not mine, validate, manage subnets or participate in governance do not need a hotkey, and for simplicity's sake should use coldkey-only wallets.

Run the following command to create a coldkey-only wallet.

btcli wallet new_coldkey --wallet.name <my_coldkey>

For example,

btcli wallet new_coldkey --wallet.name test-coldkey

You will see the terminal output like the following, which includes your all-important seed phrase, a.k.a. the mnemonic to the coldkey.

IMPORTANT: Store this mnemonic in a secure (preferable offline place), as anyone who has possession of this mnemonic can use it to regenerate the key and access your tokens.

The mnemonic to the new coldkey is: paddle disagree swamp hill innocent enemy name shrug produce steak pupil joke
You can use the mnemonic to recreate the key with `btcli` in case it gets lost.

Creating a hotkey

If you plan to validate or mine in a subnet, you must create both a coldkey and a hotkey.

First, create a coldkey as described above in the Creating a coldkey using btcli. Then, provide this coldkey as a parameter to generate a hotkey. This will pair the hotkey with the coldkey. See below.

Use the below command to generate the hotkey. Replace <my_coldkey> with the coldkey generated above, and <my_hotkey> with a name for your hotkey.

btcli wallet new_hotkey --wallet.name <my_coldkey> --wallet.hotkey <my_hotkey>

For example,

btcli wallet new_hotkey --wallet.name test-coldkey --wallet.hotkey test-hotkey

You will see the terminal log like below. The mnemonic is hidden for security reasons.

IMPORTANT: Store this mnemonic in a secure (preferably offline place), as anyone who has possession of this mnemonic can use it to regenerate the key and access your tokens.
The mnemonic to the new hotkey is:
**** *** **** **** ***** **** *** **** **** **** ***** *****
You can use the mnemonic to recreate the key in case it gets lost. The command to use to regenerate the key using this mnemonic is:
btcli w regen_hotkey --mnemonic **** *** **** **** ***** **** *** **** **** **** ***** *****

Regenerating the hotkey

Make a note of the above command option regen_hotkey showing how to regenerate your hotkey in case you lose it.

Encrypting the hotkey

By default, the hotkey is not encrypted on the device, whereas the coldkey is encrypted. To encrypt your hotkey, run this command:

btcli wallet new_hotkey --use-password

Creating a wallet using Python

Copy and paste the following three lines into your Python interpreter. Replace the string values for name (my_coldkey) and hotkey (my_hotkey) with your own.

import bittensor as bt
wallet = bt.wallet(name = 'my_coldkey', hotkey = 'my_hotkey' )
wallet.create_if_non_existent()

You will see a terminal output like this for an example wallet with name as test-coldkey and hotkey as test-hotkey. The mnemonic is hidden for security reasons.

>>> import bittensor as bt
>>> wallet = bt.wallet(name = 'test-coldkey', hotkey = 'test-hotkey')
>>> wallet.create_if_non_existent()

IMPORTANT: Store this mnemonic in a secure (preferable offline place), as anyone who has possession of this mnemonic can use it to regenerate the key and access your tokens.

The mnemonic to the new coldkey is:

**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****

You can use the mnemonic to recreate the key in case it gets lost. The command to use to regenerate the key using this mnemonic is:
btcli w regen_coldkey --mnemonic **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****

Specify password for key encryption:
Retype your password:

IMPORTANT: Store this mnemonic in a secure (preferable offline place), as anyone who has possession of this mnemonic can use it to regenerate the key and access your tokens.

The mnemonic to the new hotkey is:

**** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****

You can use the mnemonic to recreate the key in case it gets lost. The command to use to regenerate the key using this mnemonic is:
btcli w regen_hotkey --mnemonic **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** **** ****

wallet(test-coldkey, test-hotkey, ~/.bittensor/wallets/)

Location and addresses of the local wallets

Both btcli and the Bittensor Python SDK use a local wallet/key store. By default, this is located on your machine at ~/.bittensor/wallets. Use the below command to list them:

tree ~/.bittensor/

You will see an output like this:

tree ~/.bittensor/
/Users/docwriter/.bittensor/    # The Bittensor root directory.
└── wallets                     # The folder contains all Bittensor wallets.
    └── test-coldkey            # The name of the wallet.
        ├── coldkey             # The password-encrypted coldkey.
        ├── coldkeypub.txt      # The unencrypted version of the coldkey.
        └── hotkeys             # The folder contains all this coldkey's hotkeys.
            └── test-hotkey     # The unencrypted hotkey information.

and listing out the contents of the coldkeypub.txt file:

cd ~/.bittensor/wallets/test-coldkey
cat coldkeypub.txt | jq
{
  "accountId": "0x36e49805b105af2b5572cfc86426247df111df2f584767ca739d9fa085246c51",
  "publicKey": "0x36e49805b105af2b5572cfc86426247df111df2f584767ca739d9fa085246c51",
  "privateKey": null,
  "secretPhrase": null,
  "secretSeed": null,
  "ss58Address": "5DJgMDvzC27QTBfmgGQaNWBQd8CKP9z5A12yjbG6TZ5bxNE1"
}

The contents of the coldkeypub.txt are to be interpreted as below:

• The fields accountId and publicKey contain the same value.
• The secretPhrase and secretSeed are not included in the file due to the high-security nature of the coldkey. When you create your wallet, either using the Chrome extension or btcli, the mnemonic (secretPhrase) is shown only once, while secretSeed is not shown.
• The ss58Address is the SS58-version of the accountId or publicKey. This is your coldkey's public address, and can be used to transfer TAO from another wallet.

Conversion between publicKey and ss58Address

Use this site SS58.org to verify the conversions between publicKey and ss58Address fields.

Similarly, listing out the contents of the hotkeys/test-hotkey file:

cat hotkeys/test-hotkey | jq
{
  "accountId": "0xc66695556006c79e278f487b01d44cf4bc611f195615a321bf3208f5e351621e",
  "publicKey": "0xc66695556006c79e278f487b01d44cf4bc611f195615a321bf3208f5e351621e",
  "privateKey": "0x38d3ae3b6e4b5df8415d15f44f * * * 0f975749f835fc221b * * * cbaac9f5ba6b1c90978e3858 * * * f0e0470be681c0b28fe2d64",
  "secretPhrase": "pyramid xxx wide slush xxx hub xxx crew spin xxx easily xxx",
  "secretSeed": "0x6c359cc52ff1256c9e5 * * * 5536c * * * 892e9ffe4e4066ad2a6e35561d6964e",
  "ss58Address": "5GYqp3eKu6W7KxhCNrHrVaPjsJHHLuAs5jbYWfeNzVudH8DE"
}

The contents of the hotkeys/test-hotkey file are to be interpreted as below:

• The fields accountId and publicKey contain the same value, just as seen in coldkeypub.txt.
• The secretPhrase and secretSeed are shown because the hotkey is, by default, not encrypted.
• The ss58Address is the SS58-version of the accountId or publicKey. This is your hotkey's public address and can be used to stake/delegate to your hotkey from other wallets.

danger

Hotkeys are for staking. Do not transfer TAO to a hotkey!

Listing all the local wallets

You can list all the local wallets stored in Bittensor's root directly with:

btcli wallet list

You will see a terminal output like this:

Wallets
└─
    test-coldkey (5DJgMDvzC27QTBfmgGQaNWBQd8CKP9z5A12yjbG6TZ5bxNE1)
       └── test-hotkey (5GYqp3eKu6W7KxhCNrHrVaPjsJHHLuAs5jbYWfeNzVudH8DE)

The output will show only the ss58Address field values from the coldkeypub.txt and test-hotkey files of the wallets.

Use the ss58Address keys as destinations for TAO

Use the above shown ss58Address field values as your public wallet addresses, i.e., as destinations for TAO transfers from another wallet to your wallet. For example, when using a command: btcli wallet transfer.

Store your mnemonics safely

If someone has your mnemonic, they own your TAO

If you lose the password to your wallet, or if you have lost access to the machine where the wallet is stored, you can regenerate the coldkey using the mnemonic you saved during the wallet creation steps above. You can not retrieve the wallet with the password alone. Remember that if someone has your mnemonic, they own your TAO.

As a reminder, if you need to regenerate your wallets, you can use the btcli with your mnemonic, as shown below:

btcli wallet regen_coldkey --mnemonic **** *** **** **** ***** **** *** **** **** **** ***** *****

Creating a Wallet with the Chrome Extension

The Chrome extension...

Suitable for non-technical users

Use this option if your activities are limited to sending and receiving TAO and you are not creating a subnet or participating as a subnet validator or a subnet miner.

1. The Wallet will first create a wallet account address in the form of a 48-hexadecimal character string that usually starts with 5.
2. Critically, the Wallet will display your seed phrase, which you must carefully save.
3. The Wallet will then prompt you for specific mnemonic words as a way of authentication.
4. Next, you will assign a name and a password to your wallet account.
5. Finally, to receive TAO from another party, you will give them your wallet account address from Step 1 (the 48-hexadecimal character string) as the destination address. Similarly, to send (transfer) TAO to another party, you will first ask them for their wallet address and send TAO to their wallet address. This way, you can create multiple wallet accounts, each with a different name and even a different password for each wallet account.

Updating legacy wallet

It is important that you update any legacy Bittensor wallets to the new NaCL format for security. You may accomplish this with the btcli using the wallet update subcommands.

See the below example command and the terminal output:

btcli wallet update

You will see an output like this:

>> Do you want to update all legacy wallets? [y/n]: y
>> =====  wallet(test-coldkey, default, ~/.bittensor/wallets/)  =====
>> ✅ Keyfile is updated. 
>> 🔑 Keyfile (NaCl encrypted, /Users/docwriter/.bittensor/wallets/test-coldkey/coldkey)>