Paper Wallet Generator for Ethereum

Application Description

Command line tool to create (offline) Ethereum paper wallets. For the mnemonic sentences the BIP39 specification is used. For the wallet address path relies on the BIP44 specification.

Demo Output

The output of the tool is a HTML page that can be viewed in any browser. An example output is provided below.

As we want to create paper wallets, the CSS is prepared make the HTML printable.

Run the Application

After cloning this repo build the command line tool using Maven.

mvn clean package

The result of the Maven build is an executable JAR file.

Creating a Paper Wallet

Use the following command to create a paper wallet.

java -jar target/epwg-0.4.0-SNAPSHOT.jar -d /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp -p 'password'

This will lead to some information on the console

creating wallet ...
wallet file successfully created
wallet pass phrase: 'password'
wallet file location: /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39.594331000Z--9a1d5dd27b3b9ded07a25e4dbf0a9c539a5edd27.json
writing additional output files ...
html wallet: /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39.594331000Z--9a1d5dd27b3b9ded07a25e4dbf0a9c539a5edd27.html
address qr code: /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39.594331000Z--9a1d5dd27b3b9ded07a25e4dbf0a9c539a5edd27.png

Three file are created by the tool as indicated in the output above

• The actual wallet file (UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39... .json)
• The HTML file for printing (UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39... .html)
• The image file with the QR code for the paper wallet address (UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39... .png)

Providing the Password in a more secure way

The above mentioned commands will show the password on screen while typing it. In addition the command is retained in the command history. These drawbacks can be avoided using the mechanism provided below.

java -jar target/epwg-0.4.0-SNAPSHOT.jar -d data -p $(read -s -p "password: "; echo $REPLY)

The same modification may also be used for all commands provided in the examples below. Special thanks to dkhokhlov for the hint in issue #7.

Verifying a (Paper) Wallet

The tool also allows to verify a provided wallet file against a provided pass phrase.

java -jar target/epwg-0.4.0-SNAPSHOT.jar -p 'password' -w /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39.594331000Z--9a1d5dd27b3b9ded07a25e4dbf0a9c539a5edd27.json -v

This will lead to some information on the console

veriying wallet file ...
wallet file successfully verified
wallet file: /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39.594331000Z--9a1d5dd27b3b9ded07a25e4dbf0a9c539a5edd27.json
pass phrase: password

Creating a Paper Wallet with a given Mnemonic

Use the following command to create a paper wallet for a specified menmonic "kite scan embark dismiss text syrup salon butter cross rude hammer course".

java -jar target/epwg-0.4.0-SNAPSHOT.jar -d /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp -p 'password' -m 'kite scan embark dismiss text syrup salon butter cross rude hammer course'

This will lead to some information on the console

creating wallet ...
wallet file successfully created
wallet pass phrase: 'password'
wallet file location: /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-09T10-07-55.955089000Z--03c4b5778a3ded3957890cfc9251aa1d1a521916.json
writing additional output files ...
html wallet: /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-09T10-07-55.955089000Z--03c4b5778a3ded3957890cfc9251aa1d1a521916.html
address qr code: /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-09T10-07-55.955089000Z--03c4b5778a3ded3957890cfc9251aa1d1a521916.png

Creating an offline Transaction

The tool further allows to create an offline transaction for provided wallet details

java -jar target/epwg-0.4.0-SNAPSHOT.jar -p 'password' -w /Users/matthiaszimmermann/tmp/UTC--2020-10-08T07-42-39.594331000Z--9a1d5dd27b3b9ded07a25e4dbf0a9c539a5edd27.json -t 0x025403ff4c543c660423543a9c5a3cc2a02e2f1f -a 0.0123

leading to the following output.

Target address: 0x025403ff4c543c660423543a9c5a3cc2a02e2f1f
Amount [Ether]: 0.0123
Nonce: 0
Gas price [Wei]: 20000000000
Gas limit [Wei]: 21000
curl -X POST --data '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"eth_sendRawTransaction","params":["0xf86b808504a817c80082520894025403ff4c543c660423543a9c5a3cc2a02e2f1f872bb2c8eabcc000801ba0374026a8b52870008143f09beae2648da1b891ebf71260f1c0d450854ce087a2a07929efec1ea48ef78afb731af5a50273a8a94821c59638d67b9d1dad6c27038e"],"id":1}' -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://mainnet.infura.io/<infura-token>

The last line may be used to send the transaction to the Etherem network (using your infura token).

Dependencies

The project is maintained with the Eclipse IDE using Java 8. Building the project is done with Maven. For Ethereum the web3j library is used, to create QR codes the ZXing library and for command line parsing the JCommander library.