Key and Transaction Management in Ethereum
Security keys are used almost everywhere within Ethereum during user interactions, and the Ethereum address is derived from the private key. In other words, the Ethereum address is the last 20 bytes of hash of the public key controlling the account with 0x appended in front. How are Ethereum addresses generated? There are three main steps to get from private -> address: Create a random private key (64 (hex) characters / 256 bits / 32 bytes) Derive the public key from this private key (128 (hex) characters / 512 bits / 64 bytes) Derive the address from this public key. (40 (hex) characters / 160 bits / 20 bytes) Even though a lot of people call the address the public key, it's actually not the case in Ethereum. There is a separate public key that acts as a middleman that you won't ever see, unless you go poking around a pre-sale wallet JSON file. Generating private key The procedure for generating private keys relies on pseudo-random number generators