web3.accounts.create() generating wrong public key

[agilani]

Which Web3.js version?: 1.0.0-beta.27
Which operating system?: Windows / Chrome
How installed?: NPM
Using it with Angular-CLI project

actual behavior

An account generated by web3.accounts.create() is creating an account with public/private key. Which is desired behavior, But when i try to access the account using the private key on myetherwallet.com, it displayes a different public key than the one given by web3.

expected behavior

The public key should be same.

steps to reproduce

initialize web3 and create a new account. I created 10 accounts and 8 out of them had the issue.

[DanielRX]

A minimum working example so I can be reproduced would help, is MEW giving you the public key or the address?

[phoax]

I have a similar problem, I try to get a public key from a private key, and
web3.eth.accounts.privateKeyToAccount('c7864d1ad07dd6ee3e1ec554e36bfe50cb95fe660bd873fd96dfe32f8908a6d0');
generates
address: "0x69E36154eba1D933aa1820195a54a5068622902f"
It should be 0x48d48309670e7E64CD277778DE02689F5268081d

[kevinwucodes]

@phoax the private key should always be prefixed with 0x because it is expecting a hexadecimal string

[ARitz-Cracker]

Lots of confusion could be solved by allowing a buffer to be passed as well, not just a string that'll have its first 2 bytes stripped cuz it's expecting a "0x" prefix.

[samjam48]

I had the same error with an incorrect account address being generated from passing in a privateKey variable using:
web3.eth.accounts.privateKeyToAccount(privateKey)

Simply fixed by using:
web3.eth.accounts.privateKeyToAccount("0x" + privateKey)`

Thanks @kevinwucodes

Of course I upgrade my web3 and went in day's worth of debugging different errors to arrive back at this problem and before actually finding this solution....

[tcrowe]

@agilani @phoax Will this suffice to inform others of the right argument? #2129