How to create a Web3py account using mnemonic phrase

Question

I’m making my own desktop BSC wallet with web3. At the moment I’m using

private_key = "private key"
account = w3.eth.account.privateKeyToAccount(private_key)

But I want to create the account using a mnemonic phrase like "hello john pizza guitar". I have been searching but I can’t manage to achieve it.

Asked By: ElAlien725

||

Source

Answer 1

At this moment the requested feature is not stable inside Web3.py

Option 1: Use some library like Ethereum Mnemonic Utils to handle your seed.
Option 2: Enable unaudited features in web3py

web3 = Web3()
web3.eth.account.enable_unaudited_hdwallet_features()
account = web3.eth.account.from_mnemonic(my_mnemonic, account_path="m/44'/60'/0'/0/0")

Note: The default account_path matches Ethereum and BSC as well. Iterating the last number you would get the next accounts. The account object could manage some operations

account.address # The address for the chosen path
account.key # Private key for that address

Answered By: Rutrus

Answer 2

If you don’t care about using unaudited features you can use this:

    w3.eth.account.enable_unaudited_hdwallet_features()
    account = w3.eth.account.from_mnemonic("hello john pizza guitar")
    print(account.address)

I couldn’t find any mention of the unaudited features in the docs, but simply viewing the attributes of this (account) object I could find you have the following attributes:

address
encrypt
key
privateKey
signHash
signTransaction
sign_message
sign_transaction

full list (including private attributes):

['__abstractmethods__', '__bytes__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__dict__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__module__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__slots__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', '__weakref__', '_abc_impl', '_address', '_key_obj', '_private_key', '_publicapi', 'address', 'encrypt', 'key', 'privateKey', 'signHash', 'signTransaction', 'sign_message', 'sign_transaction']

You should probably not use this account object to sign transactions as it is undocumented and in all examples of the docs, transactions are usually signed with private keys using web3.eth.sign_transaction(txn, key). You would have a hard time finding information about this object and its features, I stumbled upon this function accidentally thanks to vscode auto-completeion

Instead, use this to retrieve the private key and use it as seen in the docs

pk = account.privateKey

Answered By: Ramgos

Answer 3

This code generates 10 addresses with their private key:

from web3 import Web3
w3 = Web3()

# test mnemonic from ganache (don't use it!)
mnemonic = "witness explain monitor check grid depend music purchase ready title bar federal"

w3.eth.account.enable_unaudited_hdwallet_features()
for i in range(10):
    acc = w3.eth.account.from_mnemonic(mnemonic, account_path=f"m/44'/60'/0'/0/{i}")
    print(f"naddress{i} = ", acc.address)
    print(f"private{i} = ", Web3.toHex(acc.key))

Answered By: u2gilles

How to create a Web3py account using mnemonic phrase

Question:

Answers: