Is there a way to unlock all the accounts form a forked chain?

[surajsjain]

The documentation talks about unlocking specific accounts from a forked chain by specifying the account numbers during the start of the program. However, I want to be able to specify the accounts to unlock either while running Ganache or just unlock all the accounts from the forked chain in the beginning.

I saw that there was a pull request raised for it and it was also merged (with a re-opened pull request), but I'm not sure how to use that feature.

Does that feature still exist in the latest version of ganache? If yes, how do I use that? Are there any specific flags for it?

[MicaiahReid]

Hi @surajsjain, thanks for the question! You can add any arbitrary account to Ganache using the evm_addAccount method:

const address = "0x742d35Cc6634C0532925a3b844Bc454e4438f44e"; // any address can go here :)
const passphrase = "passphrase"
const result = await provider.send("evm_addAccount", [address, passphrase] );
console.log(result);

The address is now added to the personal namespace in Ganache, which means that sending and and signing transactions can be done via personal_sendTransaction and personal_signTransaction. These methods are identical to eth_sendTransaction and eth_signTransaction, except they have an additional parameter for the passphrase that was originally used to add the account via evm_addAccount.

Note, at this point the account is only able to be used by personal_ methods. For example, if you try to use eth_sendTransaction with this account, you will get an error that says: authentication needed: passphrase or unlock.

To unlock the account, you can now use personal_unlockAccount:

const isUnlocked = await provider.send("personal_unlockAccount", [address, passphrase] );
console.log(isUnlocked);

Now the account is unlocked and will work with eth_sendTransaction and other eth_ RPC methods.

---

So, to put it all together, you can use this to add an account to Ganache and unlock it:

// add some account to Ganache
const address = "0x742d35Cc6634C0532925a3b844Bc454e4438f44e"; // any address can go here :)
const passphrase = "passphrase"
const result = await provider.send("evm_addAccount", [address, passphrase] );
console.log(result);

// unlock the account
const isUnlocked = await provider.send("personal_unlockAccount", [address, passphrase] );
console.log(isUnlocked);

// use the account however you want
const hash = await provider.send("eth_sendTransaction", [ { from: address, to: anotherAddress, gas: "0xfffff" } ] );