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Checking the official documentation from cardano-wallet I can see that there are options to get wallets from mnemonics and extended public keys, but not private keys.

Even public libs don't have that option. And as far as I know it's not possible to restore a wallet from a private key in Daedalus or Yoroi.

It's a somewhat simple functionality that I can't find any info about!

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A robust way to do that is to use cardano-wallet CLI.

First of all, run cardano-wallet serve and cardano-node.

Root Key

The command that helps us writing a root private key into a file should look like this:

cardano-wallet recovery-phrase generate --size 18 \ 
    | cardano-wallet key from-recovery-phrase Shelley > secretKey.prv

It results in private key creation that might look like this:

root_xsk1vrv54w0rpg6j9qz54ed48hjf99k0qt7p4wu5l3y55tlpk8684dphx6a8xw82u3vsgwcv6n8mdxwczhfhusy22eknmdpjn9lnyram0alqaa7mwjx4rg0eyh3ckv0el34j5vswquzhvrpaze6ju6s623fs4ylx346v

Derivation Path

m / purpose' / coin_type' / account_index' / role / address_index

If you tap a 20th receiving address in Daedalus wallet you'll see the following path:

m / 1852H / 1815H / 0H / 0 / 19

where 1852 is a hardened Shelley-era address type, and 1815 is hardened ADA's index.

Account Keys

According to this scheme let's create account private key and account public key:

cat secretKey.prv \
    | cardano-wallet key child 1852H/1815H/0H \
    | tee account.prv \
    | cardano-wallet key public --with-chain-code > account.pub

These results are:

acct_xsk10ra048lvz7le0y5pkmqmceuf492u64nv8edk9qsh3036jtz84dp3xqns35edmhag0nke3xmhm87368v8mtr5d2ryd3ucjgg6e5vjf7r8eu4ejhpyax2us59c73pt7sduvddy934k8p925xxsqvc2hh8nnug24fq6

...

acct_xvk1fpqtkwf8yy5rn3f79a4vr4fpd9rxxfheursjzqw8kgj0qf3q98ux0netn9wzf6v4epgt3azzhaqmcc66gtrtvwz24gvdqqes40w088c36lqsu

Create a wallet

cardano-wallet wallet create from-public-key < 128-bit hash of acct pub key >

Additional reading

If you need more details on Cardano CLI, please read my Medium stories:

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    That's for sure helpful. So I'd just start from the second step since I already have the private key. However, the question was geared towards achieving the same result programmatically, without the necessity of running a node or bash commands.
    – Tengu
    Oct 6, 2021 at 15:49
  • It entirely depends on the framework for the language in which you are developing. Many frameworks are in development at the moment. I personally use Swift – there are no any Cardano libs for Swift, except this one: thecardanofund.com/product/cardano-swift-sdk
    – Andy Jazz
    Oct 6, 2021 at 16:58

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