Address Derivation

Standard Cosmos and EVM chains both start from a compressed secp256k1 public key but diverge in how they compute the 20-byte raw address. Standard Cosmos (rawSecp256k1PubkeyToRawAddress):

compressed_pubkey (33 bytes)
  → sha256(compressed_pubkey)
  → ripemd160(hash)
  → 20-byte raw address
  → bech32 encode with prefix

EVM (rawEthSecp256k1PubkeyToRawAddress):

compressed_pubkey (33 bytes)
  → decompress to uncompressed (65 bytes)
  → strip the 0x04 prefix byte (64 bytes)
  → keccak256(64 bytes)
  → take last 20 bytes
  → bech32 encode with prefix

The raw address derivation matches Ethereum’s address = keccak256(pubkey)[12:] convention. Despite producing Ethereum-compatible addresses, CosmJS wraps them in Bech32 encoding (e.g. cosmos1...) — not the 0x-prefixed hex format used by Ethereum wallets.

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