Externally Owned Accounts (EOA)
An externally owned account is controlled by a private key. The private key is used to sign transactions.
EOAs can:
- receive and hold ETH
- create transactions to send ETH or interact with contract accounts
An EOA is created by randomly generating a private key and deriving a public key and address from it. It costs nothing to create an EOA. It is possible to create as many EOAs as you want.
Finding the private key by knowing the public key or address is impossible. The private key is used to sign transactions cryptographically.
EOAs are usually managed by wallets. Wallets take care of securely storing private keys, managing the addresses, creating and signing of transactions, and showing the balance of addresses. Some wallets show the balances of tokens a user’s private key holds.
It is important to note that the coins (ETH) and tokens are not stored in a wallet. They are stored in the blockchain. And the blockchain is stored on the full nodes of the Ethereum network. Wallets allow you to interact with the blockchain network easily.
