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Address translation
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Address translation

An Ethereum account can be represented in two formats:

  • Bech32 (ethm...) for Cosmos compatibility.
  • EIP55 Hex (0x...) for Ethereum's Web3 tooling compatibility.

Bech32 to EIP55 Hex address

Transforming a Bech32 address to an EIP55 Hex address involves the following steps:

  1. Decode the Bech32 address to Bech32 words.
  2. Extract the raw bytes from the Bech32 words.
  3. Convert the raw bytes into a hexadecimal string.
  4. Apply the EIP55 checksum to the hexadecimal string.

EIP55 Hex to Bech32 address

Transforming an EIP55 Hex address to a Bech32 address involves the following steps:

  1. Remove the 0x prefix from the EIP55 Hex address.
  2. Extract the raw bytes from the hexadecimal string.
  3. Convert the raw bytes into Bech32 words.
  4. Encode the Bech32 words as a Bech32 address.

Translate addresses using the exrpd CLI

Addresses can be translated using the exrpd CLI.

exrpd debug addr ethm1akwntffy4us9nhgcmgjxdg78v5w3xtwletyjmv

or

exrpd debug addr 0xed9D35A524AF2059dd18Da2466A3C7651D132Ddf

Example output:

Address: [237, 157,  53, 165,  36, 175, 32,  89, 221,  24, 218,  36, 102, 163, 199, 101,  29,  19, 45, 223]
Address (hex): ED9D35A524AF2059DD18DA2466A3C7651D132DDF
Bech32 Acc: ethm1akwntffy4us9nhgcmgjxdg78v5w3xtwletyjmv
Bech32 Val: ethmvaloper1akwntffy4us9nhgcmgjxdg78v5w3xtwlkmw7r3

Translate addresses programmatically

The address translation can be implemented in a programming language. Below is an example in TypeScript, using the bech32 and js-sha3 libraries.

import { bech32 } from "bech32";
import { keccak256 } from "js-sha3";

// Bech32 to EIP55 Hex
function bech32ToEIP55(bech32Address: string): string {
  const decoded = bech32.decode(bech32Address);
  const data = bech32.fromWords(decoded.words);
  const hexAddress = Buffer.from(data).toString("hex");

  return toChecksumAddress("0x" + hexAddress);
}

// EIP55 Hex to Bech32
function eip55ToBech32(hexAddress: string): string {
  const cleanHex = hexAddress.substring(2).toLowerCase();
  const rawBytes = Buffer.from(cleanHex, "hex");
  const words = bech32.toWords(rawBytes);

  return bech32.encode("ethm", words);
}

// EIP55 Checksum Calculation
function toChecksumAddress(address: string): string {
  const lowerAddress = address.toLowerCase().replace(/^0x/, "");
  const hash = keccak256(lowerAddress);

  let checksumAddress = "0x";

  for (let i = 0; i < lowerAddress.length; i++) {
    if (parseInt(hash[i], 16) >= 8) {
      checksumAddress += lowerAddress[i].toUpperCase();
    } else {
      checksumAddress += lowerAddress[i];
    }
  }

  return checksumAddress;
}