Creating a multi-sig account

Prerequisites

  • We assume that you have cli_wallet running and connected to an exiting witness node.

  • We assume that you have set up a wallet in the CLI and imported the active private key of a LTM account with some BTS funds in it. We will refer to this account as your-base-account.

  • We assume that you have already created and registered two other accounts, which will act as the multi-sig approving accounts. We will refer to these accounts as approving-account-1 and approving-account-2.

Get account IDs

To get the ID of your-base-account, run this command:

get_account <your-base-account-name>

The response should be similar to this:

{
  "id": "1.2.41",
  "membership_expiration_date": "1969-12-31T23:59:59",
  ...
}

Thus in this case your-base-account's ID is 1.2.41. Naturally, yours will be different.

Make sure membership_expiration_date is 1969-12-31T23:59:59, which should be the case, if your-base-account is LTM.

Similarly, find out the account IDs of the two approving accounts:

get_account <approving-account-1-name>
get_account <approving-account-2-name>

They do not need to be LTM.

Get keys for the multi-sig account

To generate a new pair of public and pirvate keys, run this command:

suggest_brain_key

The response should look similar to this:

{
  "brain_priv_key": "SAPHENA AMUSEE UNSOUR IMPOT BESHOD CHATTER IMPIOUS LINEA COGROAD DECORUM GLOVEY PICUL GLUM FORTIN SPECUS MELOS",
  "wif_priv_key": "5HqjT9ZeDPNGmnAEfc7SPM9QKtP32PnWtS2st6XrWLHep7b69pi",
  "pub_key": "BTS74pa6mL6a4FZpLrnU66KBz2nb8Cfio9qT3uLZCM1zxvbWQaJga"
}

Thus in this case, the public key is BTS74pa6mL6...bWQaJga and the private key is 5HqjT9Ze...LHep7b69pi. Naturally, yours will be different. This key pair will be used in the next steps when you define the multi-sig account and then import it to your wallet.

Initialize transaction builder

We start by initializing the transaction builder with this command:

begin_builder_transaction

As a response, you'll receive an ID of the builder process - let's call it <builder-handle-ID>. This ID will be used in all subsequent commands involving the transaction builder.

Define the multi-sig account

We will now define the multi-sig account we aim to create. Our variables are as follows:

  • <your-base-account-ID> - the ID of your-base-account, e.g. 1.2.41,
  • <multi-sig-account-name> - the name of the multi-sig account to be created, choose any name you want,
  • <multi-sig-account-public-key> - the public key of the multi-sig account to be created (use the public key obtained with the suggest_brain_key command described above),
  • <approving-account-1-ID> - the ID of the first approving account, e.g. 1.2.129,
  • <approving-account-2-ID> - the ID of the second approving account, e.g. 1.2.130,
  • <approving-account-1-power> - the approval power of the first approving account, e.g. 50,
  • <approving-account-2-power> - the approval power of the second approving account, e.g. 30,
  • <multi-sig-threshold> - threshold required to access the funds, e.g. 75.

Note that the sum of <approving-account-1-power> and <approving-account-2-power> has to be equal or greater than <multi-sig-threshold>.

Run the add_operation_to_builder_transaction command to define our new multi-sig account:

add_operation_to_builder_transaction <builder-handle-ID> [ 5, { \
"registrar": "<your-base-account-ID>", \
"referrer": "<your-base-account-ID>", \
"referrer_percent": 0, \
"name": "<muliti-sig-account-name>", \
"owner": {"weight_threshold": 1, \
"account_auths": [], \
"key_auths": [["<muliti-sig-account-public-key>", 1]], \
"address_auths": [] }, \
"active": {"weight_threshold": <multi-sig-threshold>, \
"account_auths": \
[["<approving-account-1-ID>",<approving-account-1-power>], \
["<approving-account-2-ID>",<approving-account-2-power>]], \
"key_auths": [], "address_auths": [] }, \
"options": { "memo_key": \
"<muliti-sig-account-public-key>", \
"voting_account": "<your-base-account-ID>", \
"num_witness": 0, "num_committee": 0, \
"votes": [], "extensions": [] }, "extensions": []} ]

Note that the value 5, used in the first line, is specific for the account_create_operation, which we need for this purpose.

Pay the transaction fee

To create the required transaction fee, associated with creating the multi-sig account, run this command: 

set_fees_on_builder_transaction <builder-handle-ID> BTS

Sign the builder transaction

To complete the process, i.e. sign and broadcast the above builder transactions, run this command:

sign_builder_transaction <builder-handle-ID> true

If you receive no error, it means your new multi-sig account has been successfully created.

Import the multi-sig account

To import the newly created multi-sig account into your wallet, run this command:

import_key <multi-sig-account-name> <multi-sig-account-private-key>

Note that the private key to be used here comes from the suggest_brain_key command described above.

Try it out

Transfer some funds to the new multi-sig account:

transfer <your-base-account-name> <multi-sig-account-name> 10000000 BTS "here is some cash" true

Now let's try to pay out some funds from the multi-sig account (make sure it's less than the amount received, so there are funds left to cover the transfer fee):

transfer <multi-sig-account-name> <your-base-account-name> 300000 BTS "paying back" true

As a result, you should get an error indicating that funds cannot be moved:

0 exception: unspecified
3030001 tx_missing_active_auth: missing required active authority
Missing Active Authority 1.2.132

This is the expected outcome, as we are dealing with a multi-sig account. In order to pay out any funds from it, we need to propose a transfer instead, and have it approved by approving-account-1 and / or approving-account-2.