How to create a wallet

Pre-requisites

Overview

The easiest and most common way of managing your funds on the Cardano blockchain is through a hierarchical deterministic wallet One can create a wallet using one of the following endpoints of http-api:

POST /wallets - create Shelley wallet

POST /byron-wallets - create Byron wallet

POST /shared-wallets - create Shared wallet

Shelley wallets

Shelley wallets are sequential wallets recommended for any new applications. In particular they support delegation feature which is not supported by the Byron era wallets.

Exemplary request for creating new Shelley wallet may look as follows:

> curl -X POST http://localhost:8090/v2/wallets \
    -d '{"mnemonic_sentence":["slab","praise","suffer","rabbit","during","dream","arch","harvest","culture","book","owner","loud","wool","salon","table","animal","vivid","arrow","dirt","divide","humble","tornado","solution","jungle"],
        "passphrase":"Secure Passphrase",
        "name":"My Test Wallet",
        "address_pool_gap":20}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json"

Note also that you can have many wallets being operated by a single cardano-wallet server.

Byron wallets

There are several Byron wallet types available:

  • random
  • icarus
  • trezor
  • ledger

The basic difference between them is that for a random wallet user needs to create addresses manually, whereas for sequential wallets like icarus , trezor and ledger addresses are created automatically by the wallet.

Please note that random wallets are considered deprecated and should not be used by new applications.

See more on hierarchical deterministic wallet and byron-address-format.

Shared wallets

Shared wallets are modern sequential "Shelley-type wallets". The main idea is that funds within shared wallets can be managed by more than one owner. When creating such a wallet, it's necessary to provide a payment_script_template that lists all future co-signers and their extended account public keys (for spending operations), as well as a template script primitive that establishes the rules for sharing custody of the wallet's spending operations between the co-signers. Similarly, one can provide a delegation_script_template for sharing custody of delegation operations.

Exemplary request for creating new Shared wallet may look as follows:

> curl -X POST http://localhost:8090/v2/shared-wallets \
    -d '{"mnemonic_sentence":["possible","lizard","zebra","hill","pluck","tourist","page","ticket","amount","fall","purpose","often","chest","fantasy","funny","sense","pig","goat","pet","minor","creek","vacant","swarm","fun"],
    "passphrase":"Secure Passphrase",
    "name":"My Test Shared Wallet",
    "account_index":"0H",
    "payment_script_template":{"cosigners":{"cosigner#0":"self"},"template":{"all":["cosigner#0",{"active_from":120}]}},
    "delegation_script_template":{"cosigners":{"cosigner#0":"self","cosigner#1":"1423856bc91c49e928f6f30f4e8d665d53eb4ab6028bd0ac971809d514c92db11423856bc91c49e928f6f30f4e8d665d53eb4ab6028bd0ac971809d514c92db2"},"template":{"all":["cosigner#0","cosigner#1",{"active_from":120},{"active_until":300}]}}}' \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json"

See more elaborate example on shared wallets.