Using same seed phrase, can we derive Eth address on Aptos?

[0x-j]

Asked by aasoma in discord

Hey guys, I wanted to understand how addresses are encoded in Aptos. Recently a friend of mine sent APT from an exchange to an Aptos address but instead of inputting her Aptos address she instead input her ERC20 address. Shockingly, the transaction went through and the funds were transferred to an Aptos recieving address but the recieving address is the same as her ERC20 address.
Is there a way to access this Aptos wallet address with the same private key as ERC wallet
Sharing Aptos TX hash if someone can help

[gregnazario]

Addresses are a hash of a public key, so it would be nearly impossible to get the same address.

On Ethereum, your address is your public key. So, tl;dr please check that you have an address on Aptos that is not your EVM address, but instead an Aptos address with an Aptos wallet.

Please see this document on how addresses are created: https://aptos.dev/concepts/accounts/#authentication-key

[gregnazario]

Yeah, I totally agree it is problematic to send funds to a non-existent account.

In theory, it could be possible to have a blockchain upgrade to have EVM compatible addresses, but that does bring some possible attack vectors associated, where public keys match other addresses.

In theory the private key of the wallet, could be anything. Don't know what the key would be, since it's a SHA-256 hash (basically full-randomization) of the public key. It's computationally near impossible to get the private key with the different address scheme.

[aahanasomani]

Got it. I am trying to understand the rationale behind such an implementation in the first place. If a user inputs an address that is non existent, why are we allowing such transfers in the first place? Shouldn't be the first call of action here to tell the user that this is a non-existent wallet and or it doesn't match the address schema on Aptos. Instead we are creating a new public key deriving it from his wrong address and allowing these erroneous fund transfers. I am guessing there must be a strong reason for Aptos to have such an architecture in the first place. Any ideas on what that might be?

[aahanasomani]

Hey @gregnazario
Waiting for your reply!

[gregnazario]

Most wallets will tell you that the wallet doesn't exist, and that it will be created.

It depends on the platform you're using to transfer the tokens. In the case of most exchanges, they usually skip this kind of information.

It's no different than on Eth and other locations as well.

[gregnazario]

Here's an example from Petra wallet that verifies that the account exists to be sent to.

[aahanasomani]

Hey guys,
Any update on this? Do we know who controls the private keys to this newly created wallets??

[0x-j]

Hey, since it's impossible to get private key from address, so we can never find out unfortunately