A wrapper around hardhat to safely manage encrypted private keys
Hardhat is a fantastic tool. The problem is that it does not manage private keys. So, users put their keys in git-ignored .env
files. That is very risky, because if someone changes the .gitignore the private keys can be exposed. Also, despite being in a git-ignored file, those private keys live on the hard drive, in plain text. That sounds terrifying to me.
Hardhood is a simple wrapper around Hardhat that tries to solve the issue.
In the common scenario, you have an .env
file with private keys. To not change the approach, Hardhood introduces env variables called HARDHOOD_OWNER, HARDHOOD_VALIDATOR, etc. which are generated dynamically and passed to the hardhat-config.js.
So, let's say you have in your .env
file the private key of Hardhat's accounts[0]:
PRIVATE_KEY=ac0974bec39a17e36ba4a6b4d238ff944bacb478cbed5efcae784d7bf4f2ff80
You can modify your hardhat-config.js
file, setting private keys like:
...
ropsten: {
url: `https://ropsten.infura.io/v3/${process.env.INFURA_API_KEY}`,
accounts: [process.env.HARDHOOD_OWNER || process.env.PRIVATE_KEY],
chainId: 3
},
...
If you now launch it with Hardhat, the env variable PRIVATE_KEY will be used. But, if you launch it with Hardhood, HARDHOOD_OWNER will be used instead.
To configure multiple keys, you can set up the config like
...
ropsten: {
url: `https://ropsten.infura.io/v3/${process.env.INFURA_API_KEY}`,
accounts: [
process.env.HARDHOOD_OWNER || process.env.PRIVATE_KEY,
process.env.HARDHOOD_VALIDATOR,
process.env.HARDHOOD_DAO
],
chainId: 3
},
...
As always:
npm install -g hardhood
Set up a new private key called owner with
hardhood -n owner
Notice, that the string owner
will be uppercased and used for the env variable. In this case, it will generate HARDHOOD_OWNER
.
Hardhood will ask for the key, then for the password to encrypt it.
Finally it will save the encrypted private key in ~/.hardhood/[name-or-project].json
.
Suppose that you have to launch
npx hardhat run scripts/deploy-pool.js --network mainnet
You can now launch instead
hardhood -u owner run scripts/deploy-pool.js --network mainnet
Hardhood will look for the encrypted private key, retrieve it and ask for the password you used to encrypt it. Then, it runs the hardhat script.
If the script requires multiple keys, you can call it like
hardhood -u contractOwner,validator,operator run scripts/deploy-pool.js --network mainnet
In this case it will expect 3 different passwords for the 3 different private keys. However, if you used the same password for all of them, you can press enter at the second and third request; then, Hardhood will try to use the first password for all the keys.
To delete an existing keys, launch something like
hardhood -d validator,operator
To reset the project and remove all the keys, launch
hardhood -r
Hardhood uses the package @secrez/crypto from Secrez https://github.com/secrez/secrez
If you run hardhood without parameters, a help screen will be displayed:
Welcome to Hardhood v0.1.0
A wrapper around hardhat to safely manage encrypted private keys
For help look at
https://github.com/secrez/hardhood#readme
Options:
-n, --new [key] Add a new key for current project
-u, --use [keys] [cmd] Use the listed keys (separated by comma) to run the command
--delete [keys] Delete the listed keys
--reset Delete all the keys for the current project
-l, --list List the keys' names for the current project
0.1.0
- Remove the beta :-)
0.1.0-beta.1
- Implements a first version working, with some issue showing the output by hardhat
- Fix the issues with the log from hardhat
- Add option to make the tool more flexible
(c) 2022 Francesco Sullo francesco@sullo.co
MIT