Get a Hedera testnet account

New to Hedera? You need one testnet account with some HBAR, and an EVM (ECDSA) key.

  1. Open the Hedera Portal, sign in, and create a testnet account. It is funded with test HBAR and refills daily from the faucet.
  2. Choose an ECDSA (secp256k1) key, not ED25519. This template is EVM-native: the JSON-RPC relay, your browser wallet and the deploy scripts all sign with an ECDSA key, and the portal shows its matching 0x EVM address. (ED25519 accounts work on Hedera generally but not through the EVM tooling here.)
  3. Every account has two names for the same thing: a Hedera id like 0.0.12345 and a 20-byte EVM address like 0x…. The mirror node maps between them; the UI and HashScan show both.
  4. Put the private key only in a gitignored .env.local (frontend) or import it into the Foundry keystore (below) — never commit it.

From README.md at v1.1 (6ddd9a3) · View source