quill

Minimalistic ledger and governance toolkit for cold wallets.

quill is a toolkit for interacting with the Network Nervous System's (NNS) canisters using self-custody keys. These keys can be held in an air-gapped computer (a computer that has never connected to the internet) known as a cold wallet. To support cold wallets, quill takes a two-phase approach to sending query/update calls to the IC. In the first phase, quill is used with the various subcommands to generate and sign messages based on user input, without needing access to the internet. In the second phase, the signed message(s) are sent to the IC. Since this requires connection to boundary nodes via the internet, cold-wallet users will transport the signed message(s) from the air-gapped computer (i.e. with a USB stick, or via QR code) to a computer connected to the internet.

Disclaimer

YOU EXPRESSLY ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT USE OF THIS SOFTWARE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK. AUTHORS OF THIS SOFTWARE SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR DAMAGES OF ANY TYPE, WHETHER DIRECT OR INDIRECT.

Usage

This will sign a transfer transaction and print to STDOUT:

quill transfer <account-id> --amount <amount> --pem-file <path>

To display the signed message in human-readable form:

quill send --dry-run <path-to-file>

quill could be used on an online computer to send any signed transaction:

quill send <path-to-file>

To get the principal and the account id:

quill public-ids --pem-file <path>

Governance

This is how you’d stake/top-up a neuron:

quill neuron-stake --amount 2.5 --name 1 --pem-file <path>

Managing the neuron:

quill neuron-manage <neuron-id> [OPERATIONS] --pem-file <path>

All the commands above will generate signed messages, which can be sent on the online machine using the send command from above.

Download & Install

Use pre-built binaries from the latest release.

MacOS (Intel Chip & Apple Silicon)

Install quill

1. Download the file named quill-macos-x86_64
2. Move the file to your /usr/local/bin directory to make it available system-wide

sudo mv quill-macos-x86_64 /usr/local/bin/quill

3. Make the file executable

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/quill

4. Run quill

quill -h

Linux

1. Download the file specific to your system architecture

   1. for x86 download quill-linux-x86_64
   2. for arm32 download quill-arm_32
   3. for Alpine download quill-linux-x86_64-musl

2. Move the file to your /usr/local/bin directory to make it available system-wide

sudo mv quill-linux-x86_64 /usr/local/bin/quill

3. Make the file executable

chmod +x /usr/local/bin/quill 

4. Run quill

quill -h

Windows

1. Download the file named quill-windows-x86_64.exe

2. Move it and a shell to a convenient location, e.g.

move-item quill-windows-x86_64.exe ~\quill.exe
set-location ~

3. Run quill

.\quill.exe -h

Build

To compile quill run:

cargo build --release --locked

After this, find the binary at target/release/quill.

Quill has two optional features, all activated by default:

• hsm, to enable PKCS#11 HSM support (requires runtime dynamic linking)
• ledger, to enable Ledger Nano support (requires runtime dynamic linking, and incompatible with armv6)

To build a version of Quill compatible with statically-linked-only environments, such as Alpine, run:

cargo build --release --locked --no-default-features

Building with Docker/Podman

Quill can be reproducibly built or cross-compiled in a Docker container using cross.

1. Follow the instructions at cross-rs/cross to install cross.
2. If using a target with particular restrictions, such as x86_64-apple-darwin or x86_64-pc-windows-msvc, ensure you have built a local image via the instructions at cross-rs/cross-toolchains.
3. Run cross build --release --locked --target <target platform>, e.g. --target x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu or --target armv7-unknown-linux-gnueabihf.

Testnets

If you have access to an Internet Computer testnet (for example, a version the replica binary and NNS running locally), you can target quill at this test network by setting the IC_URL environment variable to the full URL. In addition to that, it is required to use the --insecure-local-dev-mode flag. For example:

IC_URL=https://nnsdapp.dfinity.network quill --insecure-local-dev-mode --pem-file <path> list-neurons

Contribution

Contributions to Quill are welcomed! For information about contributing, see CONTRIBUTING.md. Contributors must agree to a CLA.

Credit

Originally forked from the SDK.