Signing Messages

A web app can also request the user to sign a message, by using Petra API: wallet.signMessage(payload: SignMessagePayload)

Web apps can write their own message and then send it to Petra. The user will be prompted to sign that message, and then the signed message will be returned to the web app.

The following is provided for additional security.

signMessage(payload: SignMessagePayload) prompts the user with the payload.message to be signed
- returns Promise<SignMessageResponse>

Types:

export interface SignMessagePayload {
  address?: boolean; // Should we include the address of the account in the message
  application?: boolean; // Should we include the domain of the dapp
  chainId?: boolean; // Should we include the current chain id the wallet is connected to
  message: string; // The message to be signed and displayed to the user
  nonce: string; // A nonce the dapp should generate
}
 
export interface SignMessageResponse {
  address: string;
  application: string;
  chainId: number;
  fullMessage: string; // The message that was generated to sign
  message: string; // The message passed in by the user
  nonce: string;
  prefix: string; // Should always be APTOS
  signature: string; // The signed full message
}

Example message and response

signMessage({nonce: 1234034, message: "Welcome to dapp!" })

This would generate the fullMessage to be signed and returned as the signature:

APTOS
nonce: 1234034
message: Welcome to dapp!

Verifying a signature

The most common use case for signing a message is to verify ownership of a private resource.

import nacl from 'tweetnacl';
import { HexString } from 'aptos';
 
const message = 'hello';
const nonce = 'random_string';
 
try {
  const response = await window.aptos.signMessage({
    message,
    nonce,
  });
  const { publicKey } = await window.aptos.account();
  // Remove the 0x prefix
  const key = publicKey!.slice(2, 66);
  const verified = nacl.sign.detached.verify(
    new TextEncoder().encode(response.fullMessage),
    new HexString(response.signature).toUint8Array(),
    new HexString(key).toUint8Array(),
  );
  console.log(verified);
} catch (error) {
  console.error(error);
}

Sending a Transaction Using Petra