Unique docs

Account mirrors

There are two types of accounts in Unique Network:

  • Native substrate accounts. Generic substrate account looks like 5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY
  • Ethereum accounts, a 42-character hexadecimal string starting with 0x

Because of different formats, substrate and ethereum addresses cannot interact directly. For example, you cannot send tokens from Metamask to the substrate address; it requires the ethereum format.

However, it is possible to mix these two worlds thanks to account mirroring.

Account mirrors

Mirroring is a mechanism that allows you to get address representation in a different format—substrate for ethereum address and ethereum for substrate.

You can play around with address converter in the reference section.

For example:

  • Ethereum mirror for 5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY is 0xd43593c715Fdd31c61141ABd04a99FD6822c8558
  • Substrate mirror for 0x1B8EeEC6eD7e9C6B98291A8274c006e251902Ef3 is 5FkhL2YH6rZD2AspxMBoUfFnA4GwWVKHVTbL1kChhYMvSq7B

It is very important to note that you can not get the original account from the mirror account. Because of the different sizes, this is a one-way mapping.

Here is the primary use case for mirrors:

  1. If you want to send tokens from substrate account to ethereum account - send it to it's substrate mirror.

  2. The opposite operation works with one tradeoff. Tokens sent to the ethereum mirror of a substrate account will not directly top up the substrate account's balance. However, the substrate account can "withdraw" tokens from its ethereum mirror using api.tx.evm.withdraw method.

Code example

To get an accounts mirror, use Address util from @unique-nft/utils.

import { Address } from "@unique-nft/utils";

const ethMirror = Address.mirror.substrateToEthereum('5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY');
// 0xd43593c715Fdd31c61141ABd04a99FD6822c8558

const subMirror = Address.mirror.ethereumToSubstrate('0x1B8EeEC6eD7e9C6B98291A8274c006e251902Ef3');
// 5FkhL2YH6rZD2AspxMBoUfFnA4GwWVKHVTbL1kChhYMvSq7B

The following articles will teach you more advanced concepts that make the developer and user experience smoother.