File System Wallets using the CLI
This document describes how to create and use a file system wallet with the Solana CLI tools. A file system wallet exists as an unencrypted keypair file on your computer system's filesystem.
File system wallets are the least secure method of storing SOL tokens. Storing large amounts of tokens in a file system wallet is not recommended.
Before you Begin
Make sure you have installed the Solana Command Line Tools
Generate a File System Wallet Keypair
Use Solana's command-line tool solana-keygen
to generate keypair files. For
example, run the following from a command-line shell:
mkdir ~/my-solana-wallet
solana-keygen new --outfile ~/my-solana-wallet/my-keypair.json
This file contains your unencrypted keypair. In fact, even if you specify a password, that password applies to the recovery seed phrase, not the file. Do not share this file with others. Anyone with access to this file will have access to all tokens sent to its public key. Instead, you should share only its public key. To display its public key, run:
solana-keygen pubkey ~/my-solana-wallet/my-keypair.json
It will output a string of characters, such as:
ErRr1caKzK8L8nn4xmEWtimYRiTCAZXjBtVphuZ5vMKy
This is the public key corresponding to the keypair in
~/my-solana-wallet/my-keypair.json
. The public key of the keypair file is
your wallet address.
Verify your Address against your Keypair file
To verify you hold the private key for a given address, use
solana-keygen verify
:
solana-keygen verify <PUBKEY> ~/my-solana-wallet/my-keypair.json
where <PUBKEY>
is replaced with your wallet address.
The command will output "Success" if the given address matches the
one in your keypair file, and "Failed" otherwise.
Creating Multiple File System Wallet Addresses
You can create as many wallet addresses as you like. Simply re-run the
steps in Generate a File System Wallet
and make sure to use a new filename or path with the --outfile
argument.
Multiple wallet addresses can be useful if you want to transfer tokens between
your own accounts for different purposes.