Create Development Accounts

An account is a collection of authorizations; accounts are stored on the blockchain; accounts identify individual users. Some accounts identify smart contracts; a smart contract is deployed to an account; an account can have only one smart contract.

EOSIO accounts have a flexible authorization structure which enables it to be controlled by an individual or group of individuals (multisig) depending on how permissions have been configured. An account is required to send or receive a valid transaction to the blockchain

This tutorial series uses two "user" accounts, bob and alice, as well as the default eosio account for configuration. Additionally accounts are made for various contracts throughout this tutorial series.

Create Test Accounts

Public Key Persistence

In section 1.4 Create Development Wallet, you created a development key pair and pasted the public key in the Development Public Key field for the value to persist throughout the tutorial.

In the following steps, if you see YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY instead of the public key value, you can either go back to section 1.4 Create Development Wallet and persist the value or replace YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY with the public key value manually.

Throughout these tutorials the accounts bob and alice are used. Create two accounts using cleos create account

cleos create account eosio bob YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY
cleos create account eosio alice YOUR_PUBLIC_KEY

You should then see a confirmation message similar to the following for each command that confirms that the transaction has been broadcast.

executed transaction: 40c605006de...  200 bytes  153 us
#         eosio <= eosio::newaccount            {"creator":"eosio","name":"alice","owner":{"threshold":1,"keys":[{"key":"EOS5rti4LTL53xptjgQBXv9HxyU...
warning: transaction executed locally, but may not be confirmed by the network yet    ]

Public Key

Note in cleos command a public key is associated with account alice. Each EOSIO account is associated with a public key.

Be aware that the account name is the only identifier for ownership. You can change the public key but it would not change the ownership of your EOSIO account.

Check which public key is associated with alice using cleos get account

cleos get account alice

You should see a message similar to the following:

permissions:
     owner     1:    1 EOS6MRyAjQq8ud7hVNYcfnVPJqcVpscN5So8BhtHuGYqET5GDW5CV
        active     1:    1 EOS6MRyAjQq8ud7hVNYcfnVPJqcVpscN5So8BhtHuGYqET5GDW5CV
memory:
     quota:       unlimited  used:      3.758 KiB

net bandwidth:
     used:               unlimited
     available:          unlimited
     limit:              unlimited

cpu bandwidth:
     used:               unlimited
     available:          unlimited
     limit:              unlimited

Notice that actually alice has both owner and active public keys. EOSIO has a unique authorization structure that has added security for your account. You can minimize the exposure of your account by keeping the owner key stored in a cold wallet, while using the key associated with your active permission. This way, if your active key were ever compromised, you could regain control over your account with your owner key.

In terms of authorization, if you have a owner permission you can change the private key of active permission. But you cannot do so the other way around.

Using Different Keys for Active/Owner on a PRODUCTION Network

In this tutorial we are using the same public key for both owner and active for simplicity. In production network, two different keys are strongly recommended

Troubleshooting

If you get an error while creating the account, make sure your wallet is unlocked

cleos wallet list

You should see an asterisk (*) next to the wallet name, as seen below.

Wallets:
[
  "default *"
]

Next Steps

Now that you have set up your local development environment, you can begin with smart contracts development workflow. Go to the Smart Contracts Guide section and work your way through building your first basic Hello World Smart Contract.