Connecting & your identity

How the console connects a wallet, derives your shielded identity from one signature, and what the status readouts mean.

Opening /app shows the connect screen: a blueprint dial, the line "Enter the shielded layer," and a single Connect wallet button. Everything about your shielded identity comes from that one action.

What happens on connect

Wallet request. The console asks your browser wallet for an address using a custom transport over window.ethereum. Install any Base-compatible wallet first; if none is found the console tells you so.
Chain switch. It asks the wallet to switch to the configured chain (Base / Base Sepolia / a local chain). If you decline, reads still work over the configured RPC and you can switch manually.
One signature. It asks you to sign the fixed message hestia.io/keys/v1. This is a plain message signature — not a transaction — so it costs nothing and moves nothing.
Key derivation. From that signature the console derives your four keys (deriveKeysFromSignature) — your identity. The secret keys live only in the page's memory.
Client ready. It builds a Hestia client wired to your wallet (so the wallet signs and submits), an association provider that tracks the pool's deposits, and the proving artifacts served from /circuits. Then it syncs.

text

Connect ─► sign "hestia.io/keys/v1" ─► derive keys ─► Hestia.create ─► sync ─► ready
                (no gas, no tx)         (in-memory)      (browser)

The signature is your identity. Sign the canonical message with the same wallet and you always recreate the same shielded identity — there is nothing to back up. Sign something else, or connect a different wallet, and you get a different identity. The console always uses hestia.io/keys/v1.

Reading the panel

After connect, the utility bar reads Hestia/Console/<your address> with an ONLINE · BASE chip. The status strip gives you the live state:

Readout	Meaning
`agent`	Your connected public address.
`leaves`	The number of commitments (leaves) in the pool's tree — its size.
`set·root`	The current association root your spends prove against.
↻ sync	Re-pull chain events: refresh notes, balance, leaf count, and association root.

Press sync any time to bring your view up to date — for instance after someone pays you, so their note shows up in your balance.

Privacy during connect

The signature and key derivation happen in the browser; no key material is sent anywhere.
The console reads pool state through its backend indexer, which only ever serves public chain data (commitments, ciphertexts you trial-decrypt locally, nullifiers).
Your private balance is reconstructed on the device by decrypting note blobs with your viewing key — see the shielded pool.

With an identity in hand, continue to shield, send, withdraw.