SLY - Identity Management¶

As a command line program which is developed for easier interaction with the Internet Computer, it is only trivial to have a set of commands which can help user to manage their different identities. In SLY the sly identity * commands are there to give you control over all the identities you have.

You can see the full list of commands by running sly identity -h. Here we go through some topics you'll need to know.

Creating Identities
Importing Identities
Using identities

Create¶

sly identity create <NAME>

By default, SLY creates a new identity for you the first time a command is executed, this identity is named default.

You can also create additional new identities by using this command. Even though we support using Ed25519, Sly uses the secp256k1 curve when creating new identities.

The newly created identity is not the default, you should remember to switch your identity.

Import¶

sly identity import <NAME> <PEM>

Imports a new identity from a PEM file under the given name. You should bear in mind that the newly imported identity is not set to be the default, and that you should switch your identity.

Switching identity¶

sly identity use <NAME>

Use this command if you want to change your default identity, you can verify the identity you are using by either running one of the following commands:

sly identity whoami To view the name of the identity (Which you assigned).
sly identity get-principal To view the principal id of the current identity.

You can also use the top level option --identity <IDENTITY> to overwrite the default identity and switch the identity in that command execution.