Wallet

A NeuroChain wallet is a 24-word recovery phrase. Everything else — the signing key and the .human address — is computed from it, in your browser, and never leaves it.

Ways to use a wallet

All of these use the same keys and the same .human address; they differ in where the key lives and who signs.

Option	Where the key lives	Who signs	Good for	Page
Web wallet	Your browser, encrypted with your password	You, in the app	Everyday use: send, stake, vote, register names, manage agents	This page
Signer pop-up	Your browser (the web wallet)	You, approving in a pop-up	Using a dApp on another site without giving it your phrase	Signer SDK
JavaScript SDK	Your own page or script	Your code, with the phrase you give it	Building a dApp or automation that holds its own wallet	JavaScript SDK
Session key (AI agent)	The agent's machine — a separate, limited key	The agent, within scope, spend cap and expiry you set	Letting an AI assistant act for you through MCP	AI agents (MCP)
Paid names (.node, .vault, .agent, …)	No key of their own	The .human wallet that owns them	Validators, shared treasuries, agent accounts	Addresses

A .vault is controlled together by several members: a payout needs a threshold of their signatures.

Create or import

	What happens
Create	The browser generates 24 words from 256 bits of random entropy (BIP-39 word list with checksum). Write them down; they are shown once.
Import	Enter an existing 24-word phrase. The checksum is verified before anything else happens.

From the words, the browser derives the ML-DSA-65 keypair and the address as described in Addresses. The same phrase always gives the same address, on any device.

Where the key is kept

Item	Where	Protection
Recovery phrase	Browser localStorage, key nc_ks_<address>	Encrypted with your password: PBKDF2-SHA256 (100 000 iterations, random 16-byte salt) → AES-256-GCM
Signing key	Memory of the open tab only	Re-derived from the phrase after you unlock
Password	Nowhere	Only used to encrypt and decrypt the phrase

Several wallets can live side by side in the same browser; you switch between them in the app.

Keep the phrase, not the password

The password only unlocks the copy stored in this browser. If you lose the phrase and the browser data, the wallet is gone — nobody can restore it. If the phrase leaks, anyone can sign as you; rotate to a new key through Identity.

Sending NRO

1. The app reads your next nonce and the current base fee.
2. It sets the gas price to 1.5 × base fee (rounded up) so the transaction stays valid if the base fee rises before inclusion.
3. The browser checks balance, nonce and fee locally (WASM) and shows any error before sending.
4. It signs nc-tx-v2|from|to|value|nonce with your key and sends the transaction with your public key.
5. The node verifies the signature and that your public key derives your address, then queues the transaction.

A transfer to yourself costs only the fee; the app shows it that way.

Transaction statuses

Status	Meaning
pending	Accepted by a node, waiting in the mempool. Dropped if not included within 60 seconds.
confirmed	In a final block and applied.
failed	In a final block, but the contract call trapped or ran out of fuel. Value and storage changes are rolled back; the fee and nonce are consumed.
held	Accepted but delayed by the Sentinel policy layer off by default: the value is released automatically after a delay, or waits for your confirmation.
cancelled	A held transaction you cancelled; the value is returned.
refunded	Value returned to you — a held transaction that expired without confirmation, or a cross-shard transfer that timed out.

Signed operations

Staking, registering names, voting and similar actions are not transfers, but they are signed the same way. The wallet signs nc-tx-v2|<you>|<system target>|<value>|<nonce>, where the target names the operation (neuro:system.stake, neuro:system.node, neuro:system.name, neuro:system.governance, …).

For these, the nonce is a millisecond timestamp, and the node accepts only a nonce higher than the last one it saw from your address — a captured request cannot be replayed.

Faucet test networks only

On a node started with CHAIN_ENV=testnet, POST /api/v1/faucet credits test NRO. On CHAIN_ENV=mainnet (the default) it is disabled.

Setting	Default	Variable
Amount per request	50 NRO	request field amount
Maximum per request	100 NRO	NEUROCHAIN_FAUCET_MAX_NRO
Cooldown per address	24 hours	NEUROCHAIN_FAUCET_COOLDOWN_SECS (0 turns it off)

curl -s -X POST "$NODE_RPC/api/v1/faucet" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"address":"neuro:<your address>.human","public_key":"<your ML-DSA-65 public key, hex>"}'

The faucet binds the public key you send to the address when it first funds it.

Command-line wallet

The node repository still contains an older command-line wallet, neurowallet. It predates the current address scheme (NC_KDF_v3) and does not sign with ML-DSA-65, so its addresses and transactions are not accepted by the current network. Use the web wallet or the JavaScript SDK.