Shared accounts with multiple credentials in Desktop Wallet

In the Desktop Wallet, you have the option of creating shared accounts, also known as multi-signature accounts. This is useful, for example, if your organization wants to allow multiple people to manage an account, or if you’re part of a group of people who want to share an account. In these cases, more credentials must be added to an account.

Credentials

It’s the credentials on an account that determine who’s allowed to sign transactions. An account credential holds signature verification keys, information related to the identity disclosure authority, and the public attributes of the account owner. The credential proves that the account owner has been verified by an identity provider, but it doesn’t identify the account owner to the identity provider. However, in the case of a valid request from a government authority via established legal channels, it allows the identity disclosure authorities and the identity provider, when they work together, to link the account to the users. For more information, see Identities and accounts.

Signature threshold

Once you’ve added more credentials on an account, you can also specify the number of signatures that are needed to sign a transaction. This is the signature threshold. For example, three users can have a shared account where two of them are needed to authorize a transaction, or three users can have a shared account where only one of them is needed to authorize a transaction.

Share accounts

The following is an overview of the tasks that are needed to add more credentials to an account with links to more information about each task.

Step 1

A user creates the account that’s going to be used as a shared account. See Create an account in the Desktop Wallet.

Step 2

The account owner shares the account address with the user or users whose credentials are going to be added to the account.

Step 3

The users whose credentials are going to be added to the shared account generates a file with credentials that are associated with the account. The user sends the file to the initial account owner. See Create a credentials file

Step 4

The initial account owner imports the file and adds the credentials to the account. If needed, the user changes the signature threshold. See Add credentials to an account.