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Setting up an ICP Account for Relayer

This guide will walk you through the process of setting up an Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) account to use with your ZK Email relayer. This includes installing necessary tools, configuring your identity, acquiring cycles, and securely exporting credentials.

Why This Matters​

In order to run a relayer on the Internet Computer (IC) network, you need to:

  • Own a valid identity (principal)
  • Deploy a canister (smart contract) or interact with one
  • Authenticate your relayer's identity securely via PEM files

This guide is tailored for developers familiar with CLI tools and assumes a Unix-like environment (Linux/macOS). For Windows, use WSL or PowerShell with equivalent commands.

Prerequisites​

1. Install Rust (for building dependencies)​

Rust is required for some low-level tooling used by the IC SDK.

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

After installation, restart your terminal and verify:

rustc --version

Refer to the Rust Installation Guide for additional help.

2. Install DFX (IC SDK CLI)​

DFX is the command-line tool used to interact with the Internet Computer. You can install it by installing the IC SDK with the following command and selecting default installation options:

sh -ci "$(curl -fsSL https://internetcomputer.org/install.sh)"

Verify it's installed:

dfx --version

More info: ICP SDK Installation Guide

3. Set Up Your Identity​

Create and switch to a new identity that will be used for the relayer.

dfx identity new --network ic zkemail

Switch to it:

dfx identity use zkemail --network ic

Verify your principal ID:

dfx ledger account-id

This is the address of your ICP account.

4. Request Cycles from Faucet​

Follow the instructions here to request cycles from the faucet and sending them to your principal ID.

After sending the cycles, you can check your balance with:

dfx ledger balance --network ic

Deploy a Wallet Canister​

You can deploy a wallet canister for your account by following these steps:

  1. Get your principal ID:
dfx identity --network ic get-principal
  1. Create a new canister:
dfx ledger --network ic create-canister <principal-identifier> --amount <icp-token-amount, such as 1.5>

This will output the canister ID which will be used later as the wallet canister ID.

  1. Install the cycle wallet code to your canister:
dfx identity --network ic deploy-wallet <wallet-canister-id>

For a more detailed guide, see the Creating a Cycles Wallet from IC guide.

Export Your Identity to a PEM File​

You can export an account private key to a PEM file. The PEM file will be needed by your relayer container to authenticate with the IC.

dfx identity export zkemail > .ic.pem

Move it to a secure directory if necessary. Never commit this file to Git.

Modify the Relayer Configuration to Use Your ICP Account​

Here we explain how to modify configurations for ICP in the relayer designed for account recovery, located in the relayer package.

  1. You first move the .ic.pem to the relayer directory, i.e., the path relayer/.ic.pem is correct.

  2. You then modify the env value in relayer/.env as follows:

        DKIM_CANISTER_ID=<ic_dns_oracle_backend id>
        WALLET_CANISTER_ID=<wallet canister id>
        IC_REPLICA_URL=https://<ic_dns_oracle_backend>.raw.icp0.io/?id=<ic_dns_oracle_backend_id>

    The value of WALLET_CANISTER_ID is your wallet canister id which is the output of Step 2 from Deploy a Wallet Canister section. The value of IC_REPLICA_URL corresponding to DKIM_CANISTER_ID is found here.

    You can find the id of the canister we deployed from this file. The value of DKIM_CANISTER_ID corresponds to ic_dns_oracle_backend in the above file.

Resources​