jrjtLite/chain

Keychain Manager

A key system based around accounts that each have hierarchical deterministic (HD) keychains with ECDSA keypairs (the ones Bitcoin uses).

Getting started

$ npm install keychain-manager

import {PrivateKeychain} from 'keychain-manager';
import {PublicKeychain} from 'keychain-manager';

Private Keychain

const masterPrivateKeychain = new PrivateKeychain()

const accountNumber = 0,
    accountPrivateKeychain = masterPrivateKeychain.account(accountNumber),
    accountPublicKeychain = accountPrivateKeychain.publicKeychain(),

const childNumber = 2,
    childPrivateKeychain = masterPrivateKeychain.child(childNumber)

A master private keychain is the highest level abstraction of keys. It represents the root or master private key for the application and/or device. Account-specific private keychains can be derived from it, which can then be used to derive account-specific public keychains.

Note that knowledge of the master private key of an account keychain derived from the master private keychain does not provide knowledge of the key of the master keychain.

const childKeyName = 'child key'

const chainPathHash = accountPrivateKeychain.secretHash(childKeyName),
    privateKey = accountPrivateKeychain.descendant(chainPathHash).privateKey()

A private keychain is a collection of private keys with a chain-specific master key or "ancestor" key that helps derive all of the child keys.

An account private keychain is derived from a master private keychain through hardening in the key derivation process. A child private keychain, meanwhile uses hardened key derivation. It is recommended that one use at least one level of accounts derived from the master private keychain. This adds a nice capability where an entirely new keychain can be issued if the master key of a particular keychain is ever compromised.

Note that every child private key in a keychain can be traced back to the ancestor key in the chain. That said, with a chain path with enough entropy, it would be intractable to brute-force the path from the child private key to the ancestor private key.

Public Keychain

const publicKey = publicKeychain.publicKey(),
    address = publicKeychain.address(),
    chainPathHash = 'bd62885ec3f0e3838043115f4ce25eedd22cc86711803fb0c19601eeef185e39',
    descendantPublicKey = publicKeychain.decendant(chainPathHash).publicKey()

A public keychain is the public equivalent of a private keychain, where every public key has a corresponding private key in the corresponding keychain.

Note that every child public key in the public keychain can be traced back to the ancestor public key in the chain. But again, if the chain path is random and long enough, it would be intractable to brute-force the path from the child public key to the ancestor public key.