Keep it Simple - An Explanation of Steem's Public and Private Keys - (Moving from Facebookville to Steemville)
If you're new to the crypto space and you're trying to figure out why people keep calling your password a "key" instead and you're not sure why, you've come to the right place. I'm going to break it down real quick in a simple way that should make a little more sense.
Make yourself comfortable and I'll tell you a tale.
Imagine that you currently have a home in a big city called Facebookville. You've lived there for awhile and have lots of friends and family that live close to you. You enjoy spending time with them but you keep hearing about this cool new town that is actually doing things a little differently and building a new community from the ground up. Everyone's been talking about it and it's called Steemville.
As much as you've loved living in Facebookville, you're ready for a change and Steemville looks like a perfect place to move to. So you excitedly put in your request to become a part of the new community and shortly there after you get a letter in the mail that you have a new home in Steemville and it's time to move in!
So the big day arrives and you show up at your new house on Blockchain St. in the bustling little town of Steemville. The mayor is there and greets you with an excited smile and a wave. He then hands you a box that has the keys to your new house. I'm so excited that you've decided to join us here in Steemville! I can't wait to show you around and introduce you to the community, but first, it's important that I explain to you how your house keys work.
He tells you that these keys are really important and that here in Steemville you actually own your house and it actually has value, as do all the houses in Steemville. You see, unlike homes in other towns out there, there's actually a safe that comes with every home in Steemville that ends up storing all of the valuables that you collect while being a part of the community. Because all the homes in Steemville all have a safe, and are actually worth something, they are built with a few more locks compared to homes in other towns where you just need a single key to get in.
Why can't we have just a single key again?
You're a little confused about this. You've always just used one key to get into your house in Facebookville, not to mention it was a pretty simple key that you could also recreate if you lost it. It didn't have to be all fancy either. You ask the mayor why you need multiple keys and complex ones at that, and the mayor explains that it's all about privacy and security.
In Steemville, everyone's privacy is respected and the only way to ensure complete privacy is to make sure that only the person that owns the house can actually get in it. We don't want people to be able to take your key over to the hardware store and make a copy or have a locksmith be able to come over and break your lock, he says. We also wanted to make sure that the places in your house that were most private, were a little more secure than the places you often frequent. So, we ended up creating locks for a few different places on the house and a different key for each.
Those keys in the box that I gave you, give you ownership of this house, he says, but remember that whoever has those keys, also has access to your house. If you lose your key or it's stolen from you, then whoever the key ends up with will, for all practical purposes, be the new owner of the house. He looks you in the eye with a stern face and says "It's really important that you protect these keys and that you realize how important they are."
Man, this guy is really serious about these keys!
Come with me and I'll explain things, he says, as he leads you up the sidewalk to your new home in Steemville. It's not really too complicated, it'll just take me a second to show you how they work.
Welcome to your beautiful new home! You'll notice that your house has four main locks on it. You've got the mailbox, front door, side door and back door. Some of the geekier amongst us around here like to call these locks "Public Keys" because anyone can see them. You don't have to call them that, you can just call them locks if you want, and of course every lock has a corresponding "Private Key" that can unlock it. Obviously your house is on a busy street and if someone wanted to, they could walk right up and check out your locks. Not a big deal though, because only those "Private Keys" that I gave you in your box can actually open up the locks and you're the only one that has them.
Now, let's pop open that box and go over those keys in order of importance, from least important to most.
Key #1 - Mailbox (Memo Key)
In Steemit, this key allows you to read the messages that you see in the memo field whenever someone sends steem or sbd to your account. Your posting key also let's you view these messages so you end up rarely needing to use the memo key.
This first key is for the mailbox. It let's you get to your mail and read what other members of the community have sent you. Other than reading your mail, there's not much you'll ever use this for.
Key #2 - Front Door (Posting Key)
In Steemit, this key allows you to post new content, upvote , comment, reply and flag posts.
This second key opens the front door for you. It's the one you end up using the most often to get in and out of your house everyday.
Key #3 - Side Door (Active Key)
In Steemit, this key allows you to transfer funds from your wallet to other members of the community.
The side door is generally a little more private than the front door. You'll usually use it when you want to exchange something with someone else in the community.
Key #4 - Back Door (Owner/Master Key)
In Steemit, this key is the owner key on the account. It is authorized to do everything on the account and can be used to authorize any transaction and make any changes to the account, including changing the owner key to a new one. It's extremely important that this key is protected and only used in rare situations when it's actually needed.
The final key is the key to the back door. It's an extremely important key because it can actually open more than just the back door, it can open all of the doors! Most people hide their back door key somewhere safe and never use it and I recommend you do the same. You'll want to just use the key specific to each of your other doors to come and go when you need to and only pull out that back door key if there's some sort of emergency.
Sometimes folks like to give their friends a key to the front door so they can come into the house and take care of some things if needed, and this is just fine! What you want to make sure of is that you never give out the key to your back door.
So there you have it! Now you know how the keys work to your new home. It can be a little confusing at first but, you'll pick it up pretty quick. Just make sure you keep those four private keys to yourself and somewhere safe and only use the keys that you actually need to get done what you need to do.
Then the mayor claps you on the back and with a big grin says, now that you know how to get into your house, let's take a stroll down Introduceyourself Lane and let everyone know you're here!
So back in the real world, this is what your keys look like.
If you go to your wallet and click the permissions tab you'll be able to see your public keys, or locks. You can also view the public keys for any other account if you wanted by just checking the Steem blockchain. Here's a picture of what my public keys look like when viewed in my wallet and what they look like by viewing them from the blockchain using steemd.
You'll notice that each public key starts with the letters "STM" and then is followed by a long string of letters and numbers. This is how you can easily identify whether or not you're working with a public or private key. Your public keys are always going to start with "STM"
Now, about your private keys.
When your Steem account is first created and you write down that long password, you're writing down the owner key to your account. This is the master key for your Steem account and it's then used to generate the three other keys that are associated with your account.
The master key is always going to start with "P5" followed by a long string of letters and numbers.
I'm obviously not going to show you what my private keys look like (I don't want to give you the keys to my home after all!) but you can take a look at your own private keys and see what I'm talking about.
The final three keys will all start with the number "5" followed by a long string of letters and numbers.
So, now you know how to identify the two types of keys that protect your account on the Steem blockchain, the Public Keys and the Private Keys. You've hopefully also learned how important these keys are and the purpose that they serve. You don't want to be logging into your account with your master key. You always want to use the key that's most appropriate for the action you want to take. This will help protect you from accidentally compromising your account.
The last thought that I'll leave you with is that you want to always make sure that you check a website or form and make sure that you trust it 100% before you put in any of your private keys. Whenever you're asked to put in your key, you should get in the habit of thinking that it's like someone is asking to be added to your bank account. This will get you to make sure that you are putting in the correct key for the level of permission you want to give and will also get you to double check the site you're giving the permission to.
Hopefully this is helpful for someone out there, and as always if you have any questions just ask away in the comments. I'm happy to assist.
Pixabay
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Wow I really liked the house images, you actually helped me a lot understand what's going on with the keys... I saw a post when I first joined steemit stressing the importance of having your keys stored afely but I didn't know the importance of each one.. I've too been doing it wrong tbh although I didn't give my key anywhere
Thanks for clarifying it! Really helpful post :)
I'm glad at least one person enjoyed the house analogy! I wasn't sure if that was the best way to go about it or not, but it's the best I could do.
I just wanted to try to make the whole key thing a little bit easier for those new to the concept to grasp it, so I'm happy it helped.
Love the visual of the various keys being entry points to a house. This post really breaks it down in a way that crypto newbies like myself can better understand the system.
I always found it confusing why we needed multiple keys... so thanks for clearing some of that up. I used to just use my main key for everything... woooops.
Resteeming because I think others would find this information helpful. 😊
@rasied2b that is a very nice overview of the KEYS and it should be helpful for everyone on STEEMIT to understand what each KEY does. Thank You
Good overview with good intentions for new users. Personally relatable as I was phished a month ago because I was only using my master key then. I foolishly entered it into the fake steemit login and my account and SBD were stolen in a split second. I learned my lesson and have been using the proper keys since.
Oh man, that sucks. Good that you were able to recover your account though and learn that lesson early on rather than later down the road!
Under what circumstances do we need to put our key onto 3rd party sites like you've mentioned in your post above? Are there any reliable 3rd party sites that you recommend?
@raised2b
There are lots of sites already, and there will be many more to come, that may need you to give them permission if you'd like to use them.
Some examples:
busy.org - A different front end for the Steem blockchain
chainbb - A bulletin board front end for the Steem blockchain
zappl.io - A twitter like service on the Steem blockchain
There are also service type sites like Streemian or Minnowbooster that may ask for your key so that they can vote on your behalf.
There is also a product developed by Steemit and Busy.org called Steemconnect that is going to be the trusted connection between 3rd party services and the Steem blockchain. Many sites are already using Steemconnect.
My rule of thumb is that I trust Steemit.com, Steemconnect and that's it. If I see any other site and I don't recognize it, I go do some research about it before I give them a private key.
The other thing to remember is that you only ever want to give out your posting key. Sites should not be asking for your active or owner key.
Thank you very much for the detailed explanation @raised2b.
Personally I have tried busy.org, and I realized that I have given the worst key possible. Any counter measurements or is it too late perhaps?
You have a couple of options here.
You could email the team at busy.org and explain your situation, [email protected] or even easier, you could just change your current owner key and get a new one.
Just go into your wallet and click the password tab and go through the process of creating a new owner key. Once you have that new key, it's like starting with a clean slate and now that you know how the keys work you can then only give out the proper key going forward.
img credz: pixabay.com
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