Hardware Wallet CLI

In addition to the NNS frontend dapp that runs within a browser, the Ledger Nano hardware wallet is also supported by the ic-hardware-wallet CLI tool.

Installing ic-hardware-wallet

Installation of ic-hardware-wallet follows the steps laid out in the file README.md, which is first installing a sufficiently recent version of Node.js and then using npm to install the tool itself. After you completed these steps, you will be able to call ic-hardware-wallet in your terminal.

Retrieve the principal and ICP account

After the tool ic-hardware-wallet has been installed on your computer as described above, you can view the principal and ICP account associated with the hardware wallet by running the command ic-hardware-wallet info. The output contains a principal whose format looks similar to this: hw5je-hd33v-7xl3v-g7t2y-aapa3-635og-fz5dz-mhma6-dthmt-kzqlk-wqe.

Maintaining ICP

The command ic-hardware-wallet balance will output the balance (in e8s, that is, units of 10^-8 ICP) of the main ICP account associated with the hardware wallet. You can send ICP by using the ic-hardware-wallet transfer --to [64-char hex address] --amount [in e8s] command.

Minting and maintaining ckBTC with the hardware wallet

This section contains a step-by-step guide for minting ckBTC to an account controlled by the hardware wallet. Two steps are needed as a preparation: Installing the ic-hardware-wallet tool as described above, as well as ic-repl, which can be installed by downloading a release binary from the repository.

1. Obtain the main principal that is associated with your hardware wallet by running ic-hardware-wallet info as described above.
2. Compute the Bitcoin address for depositing funds. This is done as follows:
   1. Run ic-repl -r ic to enter the ic-repl CLI.
   2. Load a non-anonymous identity, for instance via identity default "~/.config/dfx/identity/default/identity.pem", this assumes that the dfx default identity is installed. (Other PEM-files work as well, but the actual identity does not really matter, the canister simply does not accept anonymous messages.)
   3. Retrieve the BTC address from the ckBTC minter canister. Using the example principal from above, this is done via call "mqygn-kiaaa-aaaar-qaadq-cai".get_btc_address(record { owner = opt principal "vcruu-d2fof-5dudt-i7txp-krvmo-65mku-lvjne-nxmp4-z6qya-zzqgc-3ae"; subaccount = null }). Please adapt the owner value to your hardware wallet principal. The result of this call is a BTC address, in this case bc1qelxlq9jzds3e2vfqaz9qpnj3l69ktx8sfqz384.
3. Send BTC to the address you retrieved in the previous step.
4. After waiting for 12 confirmations (approximately 2 hours), use the ic-repl CLI to run call "mqygn-kiaaa-aaaar-qaadq-cai".update_balance(record { owner = opt principal "vcruu-d2fof-5dudt-i7txp-krvmo-65mku-lvjne-nxmp4-z6qya-zzqgc-3ae"; subaccount = null }), again adapting owner to your hardware wallet principal. If this step returns successful, the ckBTC will be in your wallet.
5. Validate the ckBTC balance by calling ic-hardware-wallet icrc balance --canister-id mxzaz-hqaaa-aaaar-qaada-cai.

The ckBTC controlled by the hardware wallet can then be transferred by calling ic-hardware-wallet icrc transfer --canister-id mxzaz-hqaaa-aaaar-qaada-cai --to [principal] --amount [in e8s] and confirming the transaction on the hardware wallet.