I'm trying to get web3.personal.ecRecover to work. This is my setup:

• Chrome using Remix IDE

• MetaMask to inject web3.js

Now I'm trying the following mands in the Chrome Dev Console:

msg = web3.sha3('Schoolbus')

web3.eth.sign(web3.eth.accounts[0], msg , function(error, result){
     if(!error)
         console.log(result)
    else
        console.error(error);
})

this returns:

0xd030d9a04df643f62a1502b017f51c41a659268091abbd20e2de97b935724d7c

Now I set:

 signature = "0x36f32cbd6133ce6be7efa4cb73ff3f9ddf9b7db3ba15fa543ab0a93d04a96c102693739f946f2d89eca9030b4c8e01bb6fada1c23f05b6a4956dd63deaf187501b"

and try:

web3.personal.ecRecover(msg,signature, function(error, result){
    if(!error)
        console.log(result)
    else
        console.error(error);
}) 

and get:

0xcc3f70c6caa9fee58bab68f292bdf3132c3c9ae2

Obviously this is not the public address I used in (i.e web3.eth.accounts[0])

Any suggestions to fix this issue?

I'm trying to get web3.personal.ecRecover to work. This is my setup:

• Chrome using Remix IDE

• MetaMask to inject web3.js

Now I'm trying the following mands in the Chrome Dev Console:

msg = web3.sha3('Schoolbus')

web3.eth.sign(web3.eth.accounts[0], msg , function(error, result){
     if(!error)
         console.log(result)
    else
        console.error(error);
})

this returns:

0xd030d9a04df643f62a1502b017f51c41a659268091abbd20e2de97b935724d7c

Now I set:

 signature = "0x36f32cbd6133ce6be7efa4cb73ff3f9ddf9b7db3ba15fa543ab0a93d04a96c102693739f946f2d89eca9030b4c8e01bb6fada1c23f05b6a4956dd63deaf187501b"

and try:

web3.personal.ecRecover(msg,signature, function(error, result){
    if(!error)
        console.log(result)
    else
        console.error(error);
}) 

and get:

0xcc3f70c6caa9fee58bab68f292bdf3132c3c9ae2

Obviously this is not the public address I used in (i.e web3.eth.accounts[0])

Any suggestions to fix this issue?

• javascript
• ethereum
• web3js

2 Answers 2

After messing around with this for a few hours I finally found a working solution.

Instead of using web3.eth.personal.ecRecover use web3.eth.accounts.recover

const Web3 = require('web3');
const web3 = new Web3(new Web3.providers.HttpProvider('http://node.expanse.tech'));

let test = {
      address: web3.eth.accounts[0],
      msg: "this is a test",
      sig: "0x689f9d5718e3a4ecb643d27742c60bde7bee66a596a4593ae00ca853b8c6ea5d1ffb5b72112b053ccdcb31c4640f90bfb47b543e644437c6b23cd5f24f4e83b41b",
      version: "2"
    }

  let key = web3.eth.accounts.recover(test.msg, test.sig);

console.log(key)

You should use web3.personal.sign instead of web3.eth.sign https://web3js.readthedocs.io/en/1.0/web3-eth-personal.html#sign