Keys and addresses are used in Ethereum blockchain mainly to represent ownership and transfer of Ether. Keys are used in pairs of private and public type. The private key is generated randomly and is kept secret whereas a public key is derived from the private key. Addresses are derived from the public keys which are a 20-bytes code used to identify accounts.
The process of key generation and address derivation is described here:
- First, a private key is randomly chosen (256 bits positive integer) under the rules defined by elliptic curve secp256k1 specification (in the range [1, secp256k1n − 1]).
- The public key is then derived from this private key using ECDSA recovery function. We will discuss this later in the next section, ...
