Account

An account is a way to identify a user. An account is generated from a private key, and is identified by an address. An account can own objects, and can send transactions. Every transaction has a sender, and the sender is identified by an address.

An account does not need to be created or registered anywhere: it exists as soon as a keypair is generated, and any valid address can receive objects without prior setup. There is no onchain record of "all accounts" - an address with no objects and no transaction history is indistinguishable from one that was never used.

Sui supports multiple signature schemes for accounts: ed25519, ECDSA (over the secp256k1 and secp256r1 curves), passkeys (device authenticators such as Face ID, Touch ID, or a hardware security key, based on the WebAuthn standard), multisig (an account controlled by a combination of keys), and zkLogin, which derives an account from a Web2 login. This cryptographic agility gives Sui unusual flexibility in how accounts are created and controlled.

Further Reading

• Cryptography in Sui in the Sui Blog
• Keys and Addresses in the Sui Docs
• Signatures in the Sui Docs
• Passkey in the Sui Docs