Signum Account Activator

This is a web application (and service) to activate new Signum accounts.

A Signum account is considered active only, if it owns a public key. Usually, the public key is only available once the account has executed at least one transaction on the blockchain. To execute a transaction one needs
a sufficient balance to pay the transaction fee. To do this, an user who just created an account must ask someone to transfer some SIGNA to that account (or using a faucet). In that first step, the account will be registered in the blockchain (as receiver) and though exists publicly. To turn from an passive into an active account the user has to create any kind of transaction.

This service sends the user a welcome message and by passing the user accounts public key the account gets activated. Doing so, the user does not need to create a transaction and the sending step can be omitted.

Main Net Links - Production

Mainnet Activator UI

Mainnet Activator Web Service API

Test Net Links - Development

Testnet Activator UI

Testnet Activator Web Service API

Anatomy of passphrases

Before you obtain an account in Signum you have to generate a so called passphrase. This passphrase is used to derive a set of one public and two private keys (sign and agreement). The public key - technically the cryptographically hashed passphrase, is being decoded in an almost unique number, which is used as account id. For better readability the account id is also encoded to a Reed-Solomon-Address - that identifier starting with S-. Both are interchangeable, but do not reveal the original passphrase.
Although, it's possible to use any kind of string as passphrase, it's highly recommended to use a "random generator" (like in the Phoenix Wallet), because once created a passphrase it cannot be changed anymore.
Ideally, it's best to have a truly randomized passphrase, but this true randomness is hard to achieve. Passphrases in crypto coin world are permanent and immutable; that is, they determine the accounts identifier/address. In other words: The passphrase is the account - An individual that knows the passphrase (or it's derived private keys) owns the account.

It's the owners responsibility to secure the passphrase as much as possible

Getting your accounts public key

As describe earlier, an account only exists in the Signum blockchain once the owner has realized his/her first transaction. But it's also possible to announce the public key of the receiving account in a transaction. That way an account becomes activated without having executed any transaction yet. This application/service does exactly this. One of the most frequent asked questions is: How do I get my public key? We pointed out that a public key is part of a set of keys derived from the passphrase. So, the public key is available once the passphrase generated.
For security reasons, the activation service does not ask for the passphrase, because of the risk of a man-in-the-middle attack.

At this time of writing, the public key is not easily accessible, i.e. neither Phoenix, nor the original BRS wallet reveals the public key. Keep in mind, that you never ever should send your passphrase over the wire, i.e. do not enter it a web application.

The Phoenix wallet activates your account automatically on creation, but also offers the option to activate imported accounts

Nowadays, you don't have many options to get your public key. If you have some basic programming skills you could use a simple script to get your public key using SignumJS. Another "impatient" way is to use an online example, like repl.it, but you are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks

The following code, shows how to get the public key (some basic experience with NodeJS is required)

    const { generateMasterKeys, getAccountIdFromPublicKey } = require('@signumjs/crypto')

    const passphrase = 'YourPassphrase'

    (()=>{
        const { publicKey } = generateMasterKeys(passphrase)
        console.log('Account ID is:', getAccountIdFromPublicKey(publicKey) )
        console.log('Publickey is:', publicKey)    
    })()
    

If you have any question, don't hesitate to contact us on Discord, or open an issue

Developer Section

Running the app locally

Once you got the code, you can install dependencies and run the project in development mode with:

npm install # or yarn
npm run dev

Open up localhost:3000 and start clicking around.

Building app

To build the application (build that static files) run

npm run build

The static files are stored under __sapper__/build

Deployment

Once built, the application can be deployed on any static file server

Deploying on Vercel

This project can be hosted on Vercel

Prerequisites

1. Create an account on vercel
2. Having a Signum account, which will serve as activator account (the one that sends the welcome messages)
3. Register the secret passphrase for the activator account using
   • testnet: now secrets add activator-account-testnet "<passphrase>"
   • mainnet: now secrets add activator-account-mainnet "<passphrase>"