Private Keys

The Kotlin SDK supports vanilla account schemes such as ED25519, SECP256K1 and SECP256R1.

In this chapter, we’ll explore account creation, restoration and usage for these schemes

Creating new Accounts

All account types in the Kotlin SDK extend from a common Account abstract class.

This class provides a create static method that allows you to create a new account of a specified type and defaults to SignatureScheme.ED25519 if no type is specified.

val account = Account.create() // creates an ED25519 acc by default

You can also specify the signature scheme as follows:

val secp256k1Account = Account.create(SignatureScheme.SECP256K1)
val secp256r1Account = Account.create(SignatureScheme.SECP256R1)

You can also create accounts of a specific type directly by invoking the generate method on the respective classes:

val ed25519Account = Ed25519Account.generate()
val secp256k1Account = Secp256k1Account.generate()
val secp256r1Account = Secp256r1Account.generate()

Importing an existing Account

In case you already have existing account credentials like a Bech32 encoded private key or passphrase that you'd like to import and use, there's an overloaded import static method on the Accounts class. Pass in either the private key string or the passphrase.

For a private key:

val account = Account.import("suipri...8cpv0g")

For a passphrase:

val account = Account.import("abandon salad ...")

Signing Messages

You can sign messages using the sign method on the Account class. This returns a Result<ByteArray, Exception>, so you can handle success and failure cases appropriately. Here's an example of signing a message:

val account = Secp256k1Account.generate()
val message = "Hello, Sui!".toByteArray()
val signature = account.sign(message).unwrap()
println("Signature: $signature")

Signature Verification

You can verify signatures using the verify method on the Account class. This returns a Result<Boolean, Exception>, so you can handle success and failure cases appropriately. Here's an example of verifying a signature:

val account = Secp256k1Account.generate()

// Sign a message
val message = "Hello, Sui!".toByteArray()
val sig = account.sign(message).unwrap()

// Verify the signature using the account's public key
val isValid = account.publicKey.verify(message, sig).unwrap()

println("Sig is valid: $isValid") // Output: Sig is valid: true

The SDK extensively uses the Result type to model success and failure cases. This ensures you handle both outcomes explicitly, making your code more predictable and safer by default. For more details on response handling, check out the response handling chapter.

Last modified: 01 September 2025