Addresses

Accounts in the XRP Ledger are identified by an address in the XRP Ledger's base58 format. The address is derived from the account's master public key, which is in turn derived from a secret key. An address is represented as a string in JSON and has the following characteristics:

• Between 25 and 35 characters in length
• Starts with the character r
• Uses alphanumeric characters, excluding the number "0" capital letter "O", capital letter "I", and lowercase letter "l"
• Case-sensitive
• Includes a 4-byte checksum so that the probability of generating a valid address from random characters is approximately 1 in 2³²

Any valid address can become an account in the XRP Ledger by being funded. You can also use an address that has not been funded to represent a regular key or a member of a signer list. Only a funded account can be the sender of a transaction.

Creating a valid address is a strictly mathematical task starting with a key pair. You can generate a key pair and calculate its address entirely offline without communicating to the XRP Ledger or any other party. The conversion from a public key to an address involves a one-way hash function, so it is possible to confirm that a public key matches an address but it is impossible to derive the public key from the address alone. (This is part of the reason why signed transactions include the public key and the address of the sender.)

Special Addresses

Some addresses have special meaning, or historical uses, in the XRP Ledger. In many cases, these are "black hole" addresses, meaning the address is not derived from a known secret key. Since it is effectively impossible to guess a secret key from only an address, any XRP possessed by black hole addresses is lost forever.

Address Encoding

[Source]

XRP Ledger addresses are encoded using base58 with the dictionary rpshnaf39wBUDNEGHJKLM4PQRST7VWXYZ2bcdeCg65jkm8oFqi1tuvAxyz. Since the XRP Ledger encodes several types of keys with base58, it prefixes the encoded data with a one-byte "type prefix" (also called a "version prefix") to distinguish them. The type prefix causes addresses to usually start with different letters in base58 format.

The following diagram shows the relationship between keys and addresses:

The formula for calculating an XRP Ledger address from a public key is as follows. For the complete example code, see encode_address.js. For the process of deriving a public key from a passphrase or seed value, see Key Derivation.

1. Import required algorithms: SHA-256, RIPEMD160, and base58. Set the dictionary for base58.

   'use strict';
   const assert = require('assert');
   const crypto = require('crypto');
   const R_B58_DICT = 'rpshnaf39wBUDNEGHJKLM4PQRST7VWXYZ2bcdeCg65jkm8oFqi1tuvAxyz';
   const base58 = require('base-x')(R_B58_DICT);
   
   assert(crypto.getHashes().includes('sha256'));
   assert(crypto.getHashes().includes('ripemd160'));
   

2. Start with a 33-byte ECDSA secp256k1 public key, or a 32-byte Ed25519 public key. For Ed25519 keys, prefix the key with the byte 0xED.

   const pubkey_hex =
     'ED9434799226374926EDA3B54B1B461B4ABF7237962EAE18528FEA67595397FA32';
   const pubkey = Buffer.from(pubkey_hex, 'hex');
   assert(pubkey.length == 33);
   

3. Calculate the RIPEMD160 hash of the SHA-256 hash of the public key. This value is the "Account ID".

   const pubkey_inner_hash = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(pubkey);
   const pubkey_outer_hash = crypto.createHash('ripemd160');
   pubkey_outer_hash.update(pubkey_inner_hash.digest());
   const account_id = pubkey_outer_hash.digest();
   

4. Calculate the SHA-256 hash of the SHA-256 hash of the Account ID; take the first 4 bytes. This value is the "checksum".

   const address_type_prefix = Buffer.from([0x00]);
   const payload = Buffer.concat([address_type_prefix, account_id]);
   const chksum_hash1 = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(payload).digest();
   const chksum_hash2 = crypto.createHash('sha256').update(chksum_hash1).digest();
   const checksum =  chksum_hash2.slice(0,4);
   

5. Concatenate the payload and the checksum. Calculate the base58 value of the concatenated buffer. The result is the address.

   const dataToEncode = Buffer.concat([payload, checksum]);
   const address = base58.encode(dataToEncode);
   console.log(address);
   // rDTXLQ7ZKZVKz33zJbHjgVShjsBnqMBhmN