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Address (Account ID)

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

  1. Implicit address, which are 64 characters long (e.g. fb9243ce...)
  2. Named address, which act as domains (e.g. alice.near)
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You have multiple ways to create an account, you can sign-up using your email, get a mobile wallet through telegram, or create a web wallet.

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 a relayer to pay your transaction's gas).

tip

In NEAR, you can delete the private key of an implicit account, which effectively locks the account and prevents anyone to control it

🧑‍💻 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 account create-account fund-later use-auto-generation save-to-folder ~/.near-credentials/implicit

# The file "~/.near-credentials/implicit/8bca86065be487de45e795b2c3154fe834d53ffa07e0a44f29e76a2a5f075df8.json" was saved successfully

# Here is your console command if you need to script it or re-run:
#     near account create-account fund-later use-auto-generation save-to-folder ~/.near-credentials/implicit

Named Address​

Users can register named accounts (e.g. bob.near) which are easy to remember and share.

An awesome feature 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 --networkId 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.

One Account, Multiple Blockchains​

Supported Networks

Chain Signatures lets NEAR account sign and execute transactions across multiple blockchains, seamlessly and securely

Learn More
1NEAR AccountUnified Access
6+EVM NetworksWidely Adopted
5Others NetworksAlternative Architectures

Why Choose Chain Signatures?

🎯
Single Account, Multi-Chain Operations

Manage interactions with external blockchains from one NEAR account. Simplifies key management and reduces the need for multiple wallets

⚡
Reduced Cross-Chain Development Overhead

Write smart contracts on NEAR that directly sign for cross-chain transactions, cutting down on code redundancy and potential points of failure

🔐
Secure Transaction Signing with MPC

Decentralized signing process using Multi-Party Computation. No single entity controls the signing key, reducing centralized custodianship risks

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Bitcoin DeFi & Cross-Chain NFTs

Build DeFi applications leveraging Bitcoin liquidity, atomic swaps, and cross-chain NFT platforms with native cryptocurrency payments