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Create an Address

What's an Account?​

In IOTA, users are not identified by email or personal information but by an account and its associated address. The account is generated from a private key, which could be derived from a mnemonic. Accounts can own any type of object and send transactions.

What's an Address?​

An address is a way to uniquely and anonymously identify an account or package. In the same way your email or ID number is unique, addresses have to be unique as they are your account's identifier to send and receive transactions. You can create any number of addresses, all of which will be unique.

Address Structure​

In IOTA, an address is 64 characters (32 bytes) long and is often encoded as a case-insensitive hexadecimal string prefixed with 0x prefix. For example, this is a valid IOTA address: 0x02a212de6a9dfa3a69e22387acfbafbb1a9e591bd9d636e7895dcfc8de05f331.

IOTA Explorer

You can use the IOTA network explorer to find more information about this address and the objects it owns.

Legacy address format

In IOTA Stardust we used a different address standard by default (Bech32, starting with iota1). To read more about this change check out the address details migration page.

Reserved Addresses​

In IOTA, there are reserved addresses that identify standard packages and objects. Reserved addresses are typically simple values that are easy to remember and type. For example, the address of the Standard Library is 0x1. Addresses shorter than 32 bytes are padded with zeros to the left.

0x1 = 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001

Here are some examples of reserved addresses:

  • 0x1 - address of the IOTA Move Standard Library (alias std)
  • 0x2 - address of the IOTA Framework (alias iota)
  • 0x6 - address of the system Clock object
Keys and Addresses

Learn how an IOTA address is derived from private keys.

Create an IOTA address​

IOTA provides multiple ways to obtain an IOTA address. The following are the two most common.

Supported Address Types

IOTA supports multiple signature schemes for account generation. The currently supported curves are ed25519, secp256k1, and secp256r1.

IOTA Wallet​

The simplest way to generate an IOTA address is using the IOTA Wallet Chrome browser extension. After you install the extension, there are several ways to create an address.

Open the Chrome IOTA Wallet browser extension and then:

  • Click More Options → Create a new passphrase account. Then, follow the on-screen instructions.

For more information on the IOTA Wallet and how to keep it secure, see the IOTA Wallet documentation.

Command Line Interface​

Your first address​

When you start the CLI for the first time, it will prompt you to set up a local wallet, which naturally has an address, so it can receive and send funds.

Recovery phrase

Please write down the recovery phrase associated with your address and keep it in a safe place.

Generate Address​

You can use the IOTA Client CLI to generate any number of addresses by using the iota client new-address <AddressType>, where <AddresType> is one of the following:

  • ed25519
  • secp256k1
  • secp256r1

List Addresses​

You can list all the addresses associated with your local wallet with the IOTA Keytool CLI by running the following command:

iota keytool list
Private Keys

The private keys associated with the IOTA addresses are stored locally on the machine where the CLI is installed in the ~/.iota/iota_config/iota.keystore file. Anyone who can access that file can take control of your account, so you should not share it with anyone.

Question 1/4

In IOTA, what uniquely identifies a user?