Accounts

Accounts and identities are strongly linked on the Concordium platform. To participate on the blockchain - whether holding CCD, making transactions, or validating - you need both an account and an identity. This is regardless of whether you are using one of the Concordium wallets or Concordium Client for your transactions.

You must have a verified identity and a user identity certificate issued by an authorized identity provider to create accounts on the Concordium platform.

For detailed information about identities, see Identity framework on Concordium.

For comprehensive developer documentation on the Concordium Client, see the the Conclordium Client documentation.

What is an account

An account on the Concordium blockchain is owned by one or more credential holders and consists of two parts: The on-chain part, which is publicly visible and maintained by the validators, and the off-chain part.

The on-chain part of the account consists of:

• the credentials of the credential holders associated with the account

• the public balance

• the account sequence number

• the public keys of each credential to verify transaction signatures.

The off-chain part of the account contains:

• the private keys of credential holders which are used to sign actions by the account (e.g., sending transfers or deploying smart contracts)

• the identity an account is created from (needed for managing the account on the chain)

Note

It is possible to create a shared account where multiple users share one account. For more information, see Overview of shared accounts with multiple credentials.

How to use an account

Concordium provides several ways of interacting with the on-chain account. The same account can be used from multiple devices simultaneously, and off-chain parts of accounts can be transferred between different devices.

Concordium offers wallet applications in mobile, browser and desktop versions.

Accounts on the chain are identified by an account address, which is a 32-byte sequence. When using a Concordium wallet, however, you’ll typically assign an account name to make the account easier to identify. This is only a local alias not used by the Concordium blockchain - the name gets resolved to an actual address before any blockchain interactions.

How to get an account

Once you have a verified identity and user identity certificate, you can create accounts through your chosen wallet application. The process varies slightly depending on which wallet you use:

• Concordium Wallet and Concordium Wallet for Web: You create all accounts yourself directly in the wallet.

• Desktop Wallet: The identity provider creates an initial account for you during identity verification, though you may want to create additional regular accounts for enhanced privacy.

Account creation is an on-chain transaction that submits a credential containing cryptographic proofs to the blockchain. These proofs verify your identity without revealing personal information.

See detailed information on the steps involved in the account creation process.

See wallet-specific instructions on creating accounts.