The Hierarchal Deterministic (HD) Wallet was a standard created for Bitcoin, but lends itself well to a wide variety of Blockchains which rely on secp256k1 private keys.
For a more detailed technical understanding:
- BIP-32 - the hierarchal deterministic description
- BIP-39 - the method used to derive the BIP-32 seed from human-readable sequences of words (i.e. a mnemonic)
- BIP-44 - a standard defined to make BIP-32 easy to adapt to any future compatible blockchain
Constants
The default path for Ethereum in an HD Wallet
The mnemonic phrase for this mnemonic. It is 12, 15, 18, 21 or 24 words long and separated by the whitespace specified by the locale.
The HD path for this mnemonic.
The language of the wordlist this mnemonic is using.
HDNode
Return the HDNode for phrase with the optional password and wordlist.
Return the HDNode for the extendedKey. If extendedKey was neutered, the HDNode will only be able to compute addresses and not private keys.
The private key for this HDNode.
The (compresses) public key for this HDNode.
The fingerprint is meant as an index to quickly match parent and children nodes together, however collisions may occur and software should verify matching nodes.
Most developers will not need to use this.
The fingerprint of the parent node. See fingerprint for more details.
Most developers will not need to use this.
The address of this HDNode.
The mnemonic of this HDNode, if known.
The path of this HDNode, if known. If the mnemonic is also known, this will match mnemonic.path.
The chain code is used as a non-secret private key which is then used with EC-multiply to provide the ability to derive addresses without the private key of child non-hardened nodes.
Most developers will not need to use this.
The index of this HDNode. This will match the last component of the path.
Most developers will not need to use this.
The depth of this HDNode. This will match the number of components (less one, the m/) of the path.
Most developers will not need to use this.
A serialized string representation of this HDNode. Not all properties are included in the serialization, such as the mnemonic and path, so serializing and deserializing (using the fromExtendedKey class method) will result in reduced information.
Return a new instance of hdNode with its private key removed but all other properties preserved. This ensures that the key can not leak the private key of itself or any derived children, but may still be used to compute the addresses of itself and any non-hardened children.
Return a new HDNode which is the child of hdNode found by deriving path.
Convert a mnemonic phrase to a seed, according to BIP-39.
Convert a mnemonic phrase to its entropy, according to BIP-39.
Returns true if phrase is a valid mnemonic phrase, by testing the checksum.