What is a view key?
- Author
- CRYPTO PORT Editorial
- Published
- Updated
- Reading time
- 4 min
In short
A view key grants read access to transaction contents without granting the power to spend. In privacy-oriented designs it is how a holder discloses their history to an accountant or auditor. It illustrates that these technologies aim not at hiding from everyone, but at letting the owner choose who can see.
Key points
- Allows reading only; it cannot move funds
- Used to disclose records for accounting, audit and tax work
- Once handed over, the whole past history is visible
- Its role is cleanly separated from the spending key
Definition
A key in privacy-oriented cryptocurrencies that decrypts and reveals one's own transactions and amounts, and nothing more. It cannot produce spending signatures, so sharing it does not put funds at risk.
Privacy-oriented designs split the roles of keys. The spending key moves funds; the view key finds incoming transactions and decrypts their amounts. A wallet uses the view key to show your balance and reaches for the spending key only when you actually send.
That separation is what lets you hand the view key to someone else. An accountant can check a year of activity, an auditor can substantiate a balance, a service can be shown where funds came from — all without any risk of the funds being moved. The same idea supports running a watch-only device or server.
The catch is that the disclosure is rarely fine-grained. In most implementations a view key covers every transaction for all time, with no way to share 'last year only'. Whoever keeps the key keeps reading your future activity too, so the choice of recipient and the storage of the key deserve care close to that given a spending key.
Watch out for
- · View keys usually cover the entire history with no way to limit the period
- · A recipient who keeps the key keeps seeing your future activity
- · Read the wallet screen carefully so you never disclose a spending key by mistake