Keys

Key	Description
EdX25519	EdX25519 (Ed25519/X25519) signing/encryption key.
X25519	X25519 encryption key.

EdX25519

This key can be used for both signing and encryption.

Ed25519 is an elliptic curve signing algorithm (opens new window) using EdDSA and Curve25519. An Ed25519 key can be converted to an X25519 encryption key (opens new window), and so we call this an EdX25519 key.

The key identifier has the prefix kex.

Godoc: keys.EdX25519Key (opens new window)

alice := keys.GenerateEdX25519Key()
fmt.Printf("%s\n", alice.ID())

keys generate -t edx25519
kex1m8nd23chn6jg6c2r0rf5xhlawp2g6qwvkj5zc9val5f76enlfszstqerxm

X25519

X25519 is an elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange using Curve25519. X25519 keys only provide public key authenticated encryption.

The key identifier has the prefix kbx.

Godoc: keys.X25519Key (opens new window)

bob := keys.GenerateX25519Key()
fmt.Printf("%s\n", bob.ID())

keys generate -t x25519
kbx18e99hurn8fly3lls0v53jn9qzduey87l4vya0amjylvpvmfhkdaqtfc2v7

Key Identifiers

Key identifiers "kid" use the bech32 (opens new window) format.

The bech32 format has a prefix, separator and data part.

The prefix describes the type of key and the data part is the public key bytes encoded as alphanumeric characters excluding "1", "b", "i", and "o".

Key	Prefix	Example
EdX25519	kex	kex1ts0qw8fwkvle2f2xsqumetmr9ev5ppx22rl5hnycen68sanjzl7qnta629
X25519	kbx	kbx15z2g8pprdf4a20ea3as03fv54u0eseewlmv0ktu0ezwzakm2x3ss28selu