Wallet object? (BIP39 derived + HD capable)

[ian]

The one thing I've found viem doesn't quite have yet is the concept of a Wallet like ethers does.

There's a lot of reasons for first-class support of Wallets, the largest being that I foresee applications needing to integrate wallet capabilities and the interface to a user is generally a BIP39 mnemonic phrase. Seeing as the goal of viem is being a low-level Ethereum interface, I'd personally love to see first-class support for BIP39 wallets.

Consider the example of sending a signed tx:

in ethers:

import { Wallet } from "ethers"
const provider = new providers.JsonRpcProvider(url, chainId)
const wallet = Wallet.fromPhrase("...", provider)
const receipt = await wallet.sendTransaction(...)

in Viem, it would look something like this:

const wallet = /* ??? */
const account = getAccount(wallet.address as `0x${string}`)
const client = createWalletClient({
  key: wallet.privateKey,
  transport: http(...)
})
const receipt = await client.sendTransaction(...)

It's very clear from the docs how to create a wallet client, but it's not clear how to use a Wallet (phrase + HD path => pk) which was derived from a mnemonic and path.

Is this out of scope for viem, or is this something you'd be open to accepting a PR for?

[jxom]

You are right that viem does not yet have first-class support for wallets & client-side signing. This is something we want to add in very soon (I am currently exploring some different options with WASM via ethers-rs (Rust), and pure JS via @noble/secp256k1, @scure/bip32 & @scure/bip39).

Right now, if you want to use HD or private key wallets with viem, we have an adapter for an Ethers.js Wallet while you wait for us to provide first-class support for this.

Will post an RFC in the GitHub discussions once we have a more concrete API (which will be soon), and then you can expect an implementation soon after that. We are definitely open to collaborating on an RFC + implementation, so if you're interested, reach out.

[ian]

I'm definitely interested in helping, glad to know you'd like to include support in viem.

I suppose the primary goal of a Wallet class is to provide support for mnemonic generation and import, and derived keys with some path string? From there, to use in a viem wallet client, you'd just access the pk on the wallet like:

const mnemonic = "fake fake fake fake ..."

// could also do something like Wallet.random() 
const wallet = new Wallet(mnemonic)

// produces a { privateKey, publicKey, address } object
const key = wallet.derive("m/44'/60'/0'/0/") 

// use the key in a wallet client
const client = createWalletClient({
  key, 
})

Or something like this?

[jxom]

Just posted an RFC! #211

LMK what you think