Customizing Ethereum Addresses with getnewaddress and bitcoin-cli

When working with the Ethereum blockchain using the command line tool “bitcoin-cli”, you can use the “getnewaddress” subcommand to generate new Ethereum addresses. In this article, we’ll explore how to customize the starting address and compare it to the standard format.

Standard Address Format

The standard address format for Ethereum is as follows:

0x[hexadecimal prefix] [private key] [network identifier]

This includes a 42-character hexadecimal prefix, followed by the lowercase private key (usually “m/64”), and finally a network identifier (e.g. “mainnet”, “testnet”, etc.).

Customizing with getnewaddress

To customize your address starting with “getnewaddress”, you can pass additional parameters to the subcommand. Here are some examples:

• Hexadecimal prefix: You can specify any hexadecimal string as a prefix:

get new address 1xxxx

This will generate an address starting with “1xxxx”.

Example usage

Let’s try generating two addresses with different prefixes:

Generate a new address starting with "1234567890abcdef" (a common random sequence).
getnewaddress 1xxxx

Generate a new address starting with "mypublickey" (a custom prefix)
getnewaddress mypublickey

As you can see, the getnewaddress command automatically appends the specified hexadecimal prefix to the generated address.

Comparison with Bitcoin-CLI

Although both Ethereum and Bitcoin CLI allow customization of addresses via various parameters, there are some differences between the two tools:

• Bitcoin-CLI: The default address format for Bitcoin is:

0x[private key]

In contrast, bitcoin-cli allows you to specify a hexadecimal prefix for generating new addresses.

Conclusion

In summary, you can customize your Ethereum addresses using the getnewaddress subcommand by specifying an additional parameter, such as a hexadecimal prefix. This allows more flexibility when generating addresses with custom prefixes.

Keep in mind that bitcoin-cli has its own parameters and limitations compared to bitcoin-difficulty or other Bitcoin tools, so be sure to read the documentation on the available options for more information.

Additional Tips

• When using getnewaddress, be sure to specify a valid private key (or use the -o option to generate addresses without a key) to avoid errors.

• You can combine multiple parameters with getnewaddress by separating them with spaces or commas.

• To generate multiple addresses at once, you can pipe the output to getnewaddress and separate each address with a semicolon. Example: getnewaddress 1xxxx getnewaddress mypublickey

Customizing your Ethereum addresses throughgetnewaddress` allows you to create more unique and personalized addresses for your use cases.