Create an Address from a Mnemonic

This guide explains how to derive a cryptographic key pair and an IOTA address from a BIP-39 mnemonic phrase using the IOTA SDK. The SDK supports three signature schemes Ed25519, Secp256k1, and Secp256r1 across Rust, Go, Python, Kotlin, and Swift.

Security Warning

The mnemonic phrase used in these examples is for demonstration only. Never share or hard-code a real mnemonic in production code. Store mnemonics securely and never commit them to version control.

Prerequisites

Before running these examples, make sure you have:

• The IOTA SDK installed for your target language see Installation
• A valid BIP-39 mnemonic phrase (12 or 24 words)
• Basic familiarity with your chosen language's build tooling

Key Concepts

Concept	Description
Mnemonic	A human-readable BIP-39 seed phrase (12–24 words) used as the root secret for key derivation.
Private Key	A secret scalar derived from the mnemonic. Encoded in Bech32 format for storage and display.
Public Key	The public counterpart of the private key, used to generate the IOTA address and verify signatures.
Flagged Public Key	The public key bytes prefixed with a scheme flag byte (Base64-encoded), used internally by the IOTA protocol.
Address	A 32-byte IOTA address derived from the public key, displayed as a 0x-prefixed hex string.
Derivation Path	A BIP-44/SLIP-10 path (e.g. m/74'/4218'/0'/0/2) specifying which key to derive from the seed.

Supported Signature Schemes

The IOTA SDK supports three cryptographic schemes. Each has different derivation conventions and use cases:

Scheme	Default Path	Password Support	Notes
Ed25519	m/44'/4218'/0'/0'/0'	Optional	Default scheme. Fast and widely supported.
Secp256k1	Derived from account index	Optional	Bitcoin-compatible curve. Accepts an optional passphrase.
Secp256r1	Custom (e.g. m/74'/4218'/0'/0/2)	Optional	NIST P-256 curve. Uses fromMnemonicWithPath for full path control.

Code Examples

The following examples all use the same mnemonic and produce the same addresses for each signature scheme, regardless of language.

Rust

crates/iota-sdk/examples/address_from_mnemonic.rs

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See full example on GitHub

Go

bindings/go/examples/address_from_mnemonic/main.go

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See full example on GitHub

Python

bindings/python/examples/address_from_mnemonic.py

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See full example on GitHub

Kotlin

bindings/kotlin/examples/AddressFromMnemonic.kt

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See full example on GitHub

Swift

bindings/swift/examples/address_from_mnemonic.swift

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See full example on GitHub

Expected Output

Running any of the above examples with the provided mnemonic should produce output in the following format:

Ed25519

Private Key: iotaprivkey1...
Public Key: <base64-encoded-public-key>
Public Key With Flag: <base64-encoded-flagged-public-key>
Address: 0x<64-character-hex-address>

Secp256k1

Private Key: iotaprivkey1...
Public Key: <base64-encoded-public-key>
Public Key With Flag: <base64-encoded-flagged-public-key>
Address: 0x<64-character-hex-address>

Secp256r1

Private Key: iotaprivkey1...
Public Key: <base64-encoded-public-key>
Public Key With Flag: <base64-encoded-flagged-public-key>
Address: 0x<64-character-hex-address>

tip

All three schemes derive different addresses from the same mnemonic. This is expected — each scheme uses a different cryptographic curve and derivation path.

Next Steps