Address (Account ID)

NEAR accounts are identified by a unique address, which take one of two forms:

1. Implicit addresses, which are 64 characters long (e.g. fb9243ce...)
2. Named addresses, which are simpler to remember and act as domains (e.g. alice.near)

Searching to create an account?

You have multiple ways to create an account, you can sign-up using your email (note: email-based accounts currently have limited ability to transfer funds or sign transactions), get a mobile wallet through telegram, or create a web wallet.

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Implicit Address

Implicit accounts are denoted by a 64 character address, which corresponds to a unique public/private key-pair. Who controls the private key of the implicit account controls the account.

For example:

• The private key: ed25519:4x1xiJ6u3sZF3NgrwPUCnHqup2o...
• Corresponds to the public key: ed25519:CQLP1o1F3Jbdttek3GoRJYhzfT...
• And controls the account: a96ad3cb539b653e4b869bd7cf26590690e8971...

Implicit accounts always exist, and thus do not need to be created. However, in order to use the account you will still need to fund it with NEAR tokens (or get somebody to pay the gas for your transaction).

🧑‍💻 Technical: How to obtain a key-pair

The simplest way to obtain a public / private key that represents an account is using the NEAR CLI

near generate-key

# Output
# Seed phrase: lumber habit sausage used zebra brain border exist meat muscle river hidden
# Key pair: {"publicKey":"ed25519:AQgnQSR1Mp3v7xrw7egJtu3ibNzoCGwUwnEehypip9od","secretKey":"ed25519:51qTiqybe8ycXwPznA8hz7GJJQ5hyZ45wh2rm5MBBjgZ5XqFjbjta1m41pq9zbRZfWGUGWYJqH4yVhSWoW6pYFkT"}
# Implicit account: 8bca86065be487de45e795b2c3154fe834d53ffa07e0a44f29e76a2a5f075df8

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Named Address

In NEAR, users can register named accounts (e.g. bob.near) which are simpler to share and remember.

Another advantage of named accounts is that they can create sub-accounts of themselves, effectively working as domains:

1. The registrar account can create top-level accounts (e.g. near, sweat, kaiching).
2. The near account can create sub-accounts such as bob.near or alice.near
3. bob.near can create sub-accounts of itself, such as app.bob.near
4. Accounts cannot create sub-accounts of other accounts
   • near cannot create app.bob.near
   • account.near cannot create sub.another-account.near
5. Accounts have no control over their sub-account, they are different entities

Anyone can create a .near or .testnet account, you just to call the create_account method of the corresponding top-level account - testnet on testnet, and near on mainnet.

🧑‍💻 Technical: How to create a named account

Named accounts are created by calling the create_account method of the network's top-level account - testnet on testnet, and near on mainnet.

near call testnet create_account '{"new_account_id": "new-acc.testnet", "new_public_key": "ed25519:<data>"}' --deposit 0.00182 --accountId funding-account.testnet

We abstract this process in the NEAR CLI with the following command:

near create_account new-acc.testnet --useAccount funding-account.testnet --publicKey ed25519:<data>

You can use the same command to create sub-accounts of an existing named account:

near create_account sub-acc.new-acc.testnet --useAccount new-acc.testnet

tip

Accounts have no control over their sub-accounts, they are different entities. This means that near cannot control bob.near, and bob.near cannot control sub.bob.near.