Generate a signer

For most typical Solana transaction signing operations, you will be utilizing a TransactionSigner. This object type is capable of being "attached" to instructions and transaction to perform signing operations.

The most common of which is a KeyPairSigner, which is able to be passed around to the various functions within gill to satisfies any TransactionSigner type requirements, like when building instructions or creating transactions.

Generating a keypair signer

For various Solana development tasks, you may need to generate a new signer. Including when creating a new account, generating reference keys for transactions, or creating tokens.

The generateKeyPairSigner() function allows you to generate a new random KeyPairSigner (which satisfies the TransactionSigner type) to perform signing operations.

import { generateKeyPairSigner, type KeyPairSigner } from "gill";
 
const signer = await generateKeyPairSigner();

Non-extractable by default

Under the hood, a KeyPairSigner utilize the Web Crypto APIs to improve security.

These signers are non-extractable by default; meaning there is no way to get the secret key material out of the instance. This is a more secure practice and highly recommended to be used over extractable keypairs, unless you REALLY need to be able to save the keypair for some reason.

Generating extractable keypairs and signers

Extractable keypairs are less secure and should not be used unless you REALLY need to save the key for some reason. Since there are a few useful cases for saving these keypairs, gill contains a separate explicit function to generate these extractable keypairs.

To generate a random, extractable KeyPairSigner:

import { generateExtractableKeyPairSigner } from "gill";
 
const signer = await generateExtractableKeyPairSigner();