---
id: eth-keys
version: "0.7.0"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: aging
---

# eth-keys — eth-keys: Common API for Ethereum key operations

License: permissive · Maintenance: aging · Downloads: 6.0M/mo

## What it is and what it does

eth-keys is a cryptographic library for Ethereum that abstracts elliptic curve operations behind a clean, high-level API. It handles the core key management tasks: generating private keys, deriving corresponding public keys, signing messages with ECDSA, verifying signatures, and recovering public keys from signatures. The library supports two backends—a pure-Python implementation and an optional high-performance backend via coincurve—and automatically falls back to the native implementation if the faster library is unavailable.

Developers use eth-keys to build Ethereum applications that need to sign transactions, verify message authenticity, or derive addresses from keys. The API provides both low-level methods (ecdsa_sign, ecdsa_verify, ecdsa_recover) and convenience methods on key objects (sign_msg, verify_msg, to_checksum_address). It depends only on eth-utils and eth-typing, keeping the dependency footprint minimal.

Use it for:

- Sign Ethereum transactions or messages in a wallet or dApp backend
- Verify that a message or transaction was signed by a specific Ethereum address
- Recover the signer's public key and address from a signature to authenticate requests
- Generate Ethereum addresses from public keys for account creation or validation
- Implement multi-signature or threshold signing schemes using the low-level ECDSA API

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Provides a unified API for Ethereum key operations including private key generation, public key derivation, message signing, and signature verification using elliptic curve cryptography.

Yes. eth-keys is a foundational library for Ethereum development with no known vulnerabilities, permissive licensing, and low install friction. The aging maintenance status (last release 494 days ago) is a minor concern for a stable cryptographic library, but the active repository and broad Python version support (3.8–3.13) make it reliable for production use. Install if you need to handle Ethereum key operations.

## Install

pip install eth-keys
uv add eth-keys
poetry add eth-keys

## Installing eth-keys

Before you install: Low install friction with a pure-Python fallback backend; the package prefers the coincurve library for performance but does not require it, making it accessible without compiled dependencies.

License in practice: MIT license permits unrestricted use, modification, and distribution in commercial and private projects with minimal attribution requirements.

Quickstart:

from eth_keys import keys
pk = keys.PrivateKey(b'\x01' * 32)
signature = pk.sign_msg(b'a message')
public_key = pk.public_key
address = public_key.to_checksum_address()
verified = signature.verify_msg(b'a message', public_key)

Verify before relying:

- Performance characteristics and benchmarks comparing NativeECCBackend vs CoinCurveECCBackend backends
- Whether the package is actively maintained beyond the aging status indicator

## Package facts

- License: MIT (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: aging
- Downloads: 6.0M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

ethereum key signing, ECDSA signature verification, ethereum private key management, public key derivation ethereum, message signing ethereum, ethereum address generation, cryptographic key operations, ethereum, cryptography, key-management

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