Accounts & Identity
Welcome to the HardKAS Accounts documentation.
Before integrating user wallets or generating cryptographic keys, you must understand how HardKAS conceptually isolates Identity, Storage, and Authorization.
- The Ontology (Accounts vs Addresses): Learn why an Account is an identity context, while an Address is just network eligibility.
- The Authority Model: Learn the most critical invariant in HardKAS: Receiving funds does not grant signing authority.
- Wallet vs Account: Understand the difference between the low-level Identity layer and the high-level Toolkit orchestration layer.
- Security & Key Persistence: Understand the boundaries of HardKAS development keys and the implications of
--unsafe-plaintext.
The Environment Matrix
How accounts behave depends entirely on the execution environment.
| Concept | Simulator | Localnet (simnet) | Testnet / Mainnet |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account Identity | synthetic | kaspa | kaspa or external-wallet |
| Address Prefix | kaspa:sim_ | kaspasim: | kaspatest: / kaspa: |
| Private Key | Non-existent (virtual) | Generated (ECDSA/Schnorr) | Stored securely or Hardware Wallet |
| Funding Authority | Internal Virtual State | Local CPU Miner | Public Faucet or External Funds |
| Signing Authority | Instant/Bypassed | Local Keystore / Plaintext | Local Keystore or PSKT Export |
| Balance Source | In-memory State | Local Node RPC | Remote Node RPC |
Next Steps
To see these concepts in action, read the Development Accounts and Real Accounts guides.