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Address (Account ID)

Every NEAR account is identified by a specific address. Based on their name, two types of accounts can be distinguished:

  1. Named accounts, with human readable names such as alice.near.
  2. Implicit accounts, referred by 64 chars (e.g. 98793cd91a3f870fb126f662858[...]).
tip

For an account name to be valid, it must adhere to the specification's account ID rules.


Implicit Accounts

Implicit accounts are similar to the classic Bitcoin/Ethereum accounts. They are defined by a 64 character address, which corresponds to a unique ED25519 key-pair.

For example:

  • The public key in base58: BGCCDDHfysuuVnaNVtEhhqeT4k9Muyem3Kpgq2U1m9HX
  • Refers to the implicit account: 98793cd91a3f870fb126f66285808c7e094afcfc4eda8a970f6648cdf0dbd6de
tip

Check our section on how to create implicit accounts


Named Accounts

In NEAR, users can register named accounts (e.g. bob.near) which are simpler to use and remember.

Moreover, named accounts can create sub-accounts of themselves, helping to better organize related-accounts. In this way, named accounts work as domains, particularly:

  1. Only the registrar account can create short top-level accounts (<32 char).
  2. Anyone can create long (>= 32 chars) top-level accounts.
  3. An account can only create immediate sub-accounts of itself.

In other words:

  1. Only registrar can create short top-level accounts (e.g. near, aurora).
  2. Anyone can create long top-level accounts, e.g. verylongaccountnamethatis32chars.
  3. near can create bob.near, and bob.near can create app.bob.near.
  4. near cannot create app.bob.near, and test.near cannot create sub.example.near.

Currently, mainnet accounts are sub-accounts of .near (example.near), and testnet accounts are sub-accounts of testnet (example.testnet).

info

Accounts have no control over sub-accounts, since they do NOT share access keys

tip

Check our section on how to create named accounts