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Version: 0.16.0

Create a Wallet

Onboarding starts with a choice of account kind on the Welcome screen: a Michelson runtime account (tz1, backed by a BIP-39 recovery phrase) or an EVM runtime account (0x, backed by a secp256k1 private key). The creation flow then generates the corresponding secret, forces you to acknowledge you have saved it, and encrypts the vault with your chosen password.

Flow overview (Tezos path)​

Tezos path — four stages​

Stage 1 — Acknowledgements​

Before anything is generated, two checkboxes must be ticked: you will write the phrase down offline (the wallet cannot restore it), and you understand anyone with the phrase can move your funds.

Stage 2 — Recovery phrase​

The wallet generates a fresh 24-word English BIP-39 mnemonic (256-bit entropy, via newMnemonic() in packages/core/src/shared/seed.ts) and displays it in a numbered grid, blurred until you tap to reveal. There is no copy button here — the phrase is meant to be written down offline.

An info note on this screen states an important scope caveat: this phrase restores every account you create in this wallet, but a Tezos secret key or EVM private key you import later is not derived from it — back those up separately.

Back up your recovery phrase

Anyone with your 24 words can access your funds. Store them offline, in order, somewhere safe. The wallet has no recovery mechanism — if you lose your phrase and forget your password, your funds are gone.

Stage 3 — Confirmation​

The wallet asks you to type the words at three randomly chosen positions. All three must match before you can continue. This gate exists purely to force a moment of deliberate verification before encryption.

Stage 4 — Set password​

Enter and confirm a password (minimum 8 characters). This password:

  • Is the KDF input for PBKDF2-SHA256 (600 000 iterations)
  • Protects the vault stored in chrome.storage.local
  • Is never stored anywhere — only used transiently to derive the encryption key

Click Open wallet to trigger CREATE_WALLET → keyring.importFromMnemonic().

On success you are redirected to the Home screen.

EVM path​

Picking EVM runtime on the Welcome screen runs the mirror flow in CreateEvm:

  1. Acknowledgements — the same two checkboxes, phrased for a private key.
  2. Private key — the wallet generates a fresh random 32-byte secp256k1 private key and shows it (64 hex characters, 0x-prefixed) alongside the derived EVM address, blurred until revealed. Reveal, Hide, and Copy controls are provided.
  3. Confirm backup — a checkbox acknowledging the key is stored offline. The wallet won't show it again until you reveal it from Settings.
  4. Set password — identical to the Tezos path. Submission goes through IMPORT_EVM_PRIVKEY.

An EVM-native account has a single 0x address and no recovery phrase of its own — the private key is the backup. A vault created this way holds no wallet seed, so the derived-account cards described in Multi-account vaults don't appear until you add a phrase-backed account.

What happens internally (Tezos path)​

  1. The popup generates the 24-word English BIP-39 mnemonic via @scure/bip39 and keeps it in memory across the reveal/confirm stages.
  2. The service worker's createAccount use case calls keyring.importFromMnemonic(mnemonic, password) (the keyring's create() method is a thin wrapper that generates a mnemonic and calls the same function):
    • Validate the mnemonic against the English wordlist
    • Derive the Tezos identity via SLIP-10 ed25519 on m/44'/1729'/0'/0' — HD index 0, the same path the earlier single-account wallet used, so addresses are unchanged
    • Store the phrase as the vault's wallet seed: later "Add account" derives the next per-curve index from this phrase instead of minting a new one (see Multi-account vaults)
    • Generate a random 16-byte salt and 12-byte IV
    • Derive a 256-bit key: PBKDF2-SHA256(password, salt, 600 000 iterations)
    • Encrypt the vault payload (version 3): AES-256-GCM(key, iv, payload)
    • Persist { salt, iv, ciphertext, iterations } to chrome.storage.local
  3. The service worker builds the account's container (signer, provider, fetchers) and the popup lands on Home, unlocked.

The keyring lives in packages/core/src/background/keyring.ts; the vault envelope in packages/core/src/shared/vault-crypto.ts.

See also​