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Signing a message is a way you can prove you control a particular address and demonstrate you have ownership of the funds or public key.
This feature is only available to addresses that you control both the public and private key for, so no one else can claim to be you unless they too also knew your address's private key! The wallet must also be unlocked if the wallet has been encrypted!
You can sign a message through your *coin GUI Wallet or via the terminal / command line. Both processes will be demonstrated below.
The steps below should be done within your terminal / command line as you'll be interfacing directly with your running *coind node process. The examples below are done using obsidiand which is the binary process or "headless" wallet. The command is used like so: signmessage <coinaddress> <message>.
user@127.0.0.1: obsidiand signmessage XEGqtz71fQwmCMgtL37BSt6RwB3crNp6JF secret
H5i1DLcmrspC4O//5PmL3YIasFuXVKeVzmT4hEQMYCnWoxSOgySfP0C/3cindQYnvjtb6k9BbNkrIswAXPgJAHg=
If you try to sign a message with an address you do not control/own the private key for, you will see an error.
user@127.0.0.1: obsidiand signmessage XSdE1vqSQHUfCF6HNLacKghUxxGAoGZYUS secret
error: {"code":-4,"message":"Private key not available"}
Remember!! NEVER share your Private Key or Sign a Message for an unknown application / third party.
