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Hyperlane agents - Validators and the Relayer - must be configured with private keys in order to operate. Validators use private keys to sign message checkpoints, and the Relayer uses private keys to sign transactions that deliver messages. Hyperlane agents currently support being configured with private keys in one of two ways.

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1. Hexadecimal keys

A raw hexadecimal private key used for in-memory signing. This is the easiest and fastest setup.
Hexadecimal keys are less secure than AWS KMS keys.

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Generate a hexadecimal key

Keep track of your address and private key for use with your agent. Do not lose or leak it.
Using Foundry’s cast, you can create a new key pair:
The output will look something like this:

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2. AWS KMS

A key generated by AWS and stored in a CloudHSM. This is the recommended setup for production agents.

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Create an IAM user

This IAM user will be given permission to sign with the KMS key that you will later configure. Your Hyperlane agent will use this identity when signing transactions.
  1. Go to AWS’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) in the AWS console.
  2. On the left, under “Access management”, click “Users”.
  3. Click the orange button “Add users”.
  4. Pick a friendly and informative username, like hyperlane-validator-${chain_name} or hyperlane-relayer-${chain_name}. This username will be referenced in future steps, so if you choose a different username be sure to use your correct username in the future.
  5. Click “Next”, you do not need to assign the user any permissions.
  6. Click “Create user”.
  7. Click into the user that you just created
  8. Click the “Security Credentials” tab
  9. Scroll down to “Access Keys” and click “Create Access Key”
  10. Select “Application running outside AWS” and click “Next”
  11. Click “Next”, no need to add a description tag
  12. Click “Create access key”
  13. Copy the “Access key ID” and “Secret access key” to a safe place. These will be passed to your Hyperlane Relayer as environment variables.

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Create a KMS key

This key will be used by your agent for signing.
  1. Go to AWS’s Key Management Service (KMS) in the AWS console.
  2. Ensure you are in the region you want to create the key in. This can be confirmed by viewing the region at the top right of the console, or by finding the name in the URL’s subdomain (e.g. us-west-2.console.aws.amazon.com means you’re operating in the region us-west-2).
  3. On the left, click “Customer managed keys”.
  4. Click “Create key”.
  5. Select the “Asymmetric” key type.
  6. Select the “Sign and verify” key usage.
  7. Select the ECC_SECG_P256K1 key spec.
  8. Click “Next”.
  9. Set the Alias to something friendly and informative, like hyperlane-validator-signer-${chain_name} or hyperlane-relayer-signer-${chain_name}
  10. While not necessary, feel free to write a description and add any tags that you think will be useful.
  11. Click “Next”.
  12. A key administrator is not required, but if you want, you can select one.
  13. Click “Next”.
  14. Give usage permissions to the IAM user you created in section #1.
  15. Click “Next”.
  16. In the Review page, scroll to the “Key policy”. The generated key policy is acceptable, but you can make the access even less permissive if you wish by:
    1. Removing the kms:DescribeKey and kms:Verify actions from the statement whose “Sid” is “Allow use of the key”
    2. Removing the entire statement whose “Sid” is “Allow attachment of persistent resources”.
  17. Click “Finish”
Advanced users may consider using the IAM/KMS Terraform module instead to create the IAM user and KMS key.

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Query address

In some cases you may need to know the address associated with the KMS key you generated.