Multisignature accounts, one of the best ways to secure a communal fund, and without a doubt, a very promising EOS feature. You may already understand the basics, but how do you actually sign transactions with different keys, and how can you set up a multisignature account yourself?

The basic setup of an EOS account

By default, an EOS account has 2 permissions, active and owner.

The active permission authority is used for transferring funds, voting for producers and making other high-level account changes.

The owner permission symbolizes ownership of an account. There are only a few transactions that require this authority, but most notably, are actions that make any kind of change to the owner authority. Generally, it is suggested that owner is kept in cold storage and not shared with anyone. The ownerpermission can be used to recover another permission that may have been compromised.

By default, the keys for the active and owner both have a weight of 1, and both the active and the owner permission have a default threshold of 1. This means that there is only 1 signature from the owner key required to perform any action that requires the owner permission. The same goes for the activepermission. There is only 1 signature from the active key required to perform any action that requires the active permission.

This is how a default EOS account is set up.

How a multisignature account works

Taken from the EOSIO Wiki

In the above image you can see a possible setup of a multisignature account. In this example the owner permission has a threshold of 2, and has 2 keys, both with a weight of 1. This means that the signature of both keys is needed to perform any action that requires the owner permission.

The active permission has a threshold of 1, and has 2 keys, both with a weight of 1. This means that only 1 signature of any of of the 2 keys is required to perform any action that requires the active permission.

How to create a multisignature account yourself

Assuming the above makes sense, we will now explain how to setup a multisignature account on your own, using the EOSToolkit. We will set up the account just like the multisignature account explained above.

First of all you have to download Scatter, a browser extension*. You can get Scatter here. Follow the instructions on how to set up your Scatter account and login to your Scatter extension (for step by step instructions follow this guide). After that go to toolkit and connect your existing EOS account. For a more detailed instruction on how to connect your account to Scatter, visit the new helpdesk by Blockgenic and Genereos.

*The Scatter chrome extension is no longer the recommended tool, this is currently Scatter desktop. For instructions on how to install Scatter desktop follow this guide.