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Account/Key Management

Cryptographic keys are an essential component of a Quorum network. Quorum uses keys to create digital signatures which verify a sender’s identity and prevent message tampering. The Privacy Manager uses keys to encrypt private transaction data.

Both Quorum and the Privacy Manager use user-provided asymmetric key pairs. Each key pair consists of a public key and a private key. The public key can be shared freely, but the private key should never be shared.

• Quorum derives the account address from the public key by taking the last 20 bytes of its keccak256 hash
• The Privacy Manager uses the public key as an identifier for the target nodes of a private transaction (i.e. the privateFor transaction field)

Key management determines how Quorum/the Privacy Manager stores and uses private keys. The corresponding sections for Quorum, Tessera, and Constellation detail the methods available to each.