Support for Ethereum formatted addresses (H160) could lead to compatibility issue

[Luca-Poggi]

Hello, I'm Luca from 🧊 Iceberg Nodes 🧊.

I noticed a possible issue, but I don't know if it depends on Polkadot JS Extension side (let me ping @jacogr as contributor) or DApps side.
I discovered the issue on Subsocial DApp and ChainX DApp, so let me ping @siman and @qinghuan-chain, but could be also in other DApps. I will open the same issue on their respective repositories.

As mentioned in the object, I think that the issue is related to the new support for Ethereum formatted addresses (H160) like Moonbeam, Moonriver and Moonbase Alpha wallets (maybe is interesting also for Moonbeam team, so let me ping @albertov19). I noticed the issue right after I imported a Moonbase Alpha account to proper use it with Polkadot JS DApp for collator relating operations. Before this action, no issue detected.

How to reproduce the issue:
BEFORE THE ISSUE

• Get a browser Chrome based or Firefox with Polkadot JS Extension v0.40.1 installed (last version on store)
• Go to polkadot.js.org/apps and select Moonbase Alpha chain
• Update Metadata for extension if needed
• Create or import a new account on Polkadot JS Extension and select "Allow any chains" (this detail is very important)
• Go to dapps.chainx.org and app.subsocial.network it should work as expected --> OK
  GENERATING THE ISSUE
• Create or import a new account on Polkadot JS Extension and select "Moonbase Alpha" chain as display format (this is very important)
  AFTER THE ISSUE
• Reload polkadot.js.org/apps and it should work as expected --> OK
• Go to dapps.chainx.org and app.subsocial.network it isn't working anymore --> seems that extension is like not recognized

In other DApps the extension is recognized correctly, for example https://kanaria.rmrk.app/

Trying to solve (temporary) the issue, I tried to:

• change from "Moonbase Alpha" to "Allow use on any chain" --> didn't solve the issue
• remove the H160 account --> SOLVED the issue

Hope to be helpful in order to solve this issue
Ping me on Telegram if needed @LucaPoggi

Thank you

[albertov19]

Thanks for bringing this up. I know we were working on bringing H160 support to Moonbeam. @joelamouche might have some more info

[joelamouche]

I am currently trying to add the correct address derivation for ethereum in #837

Go to dapps.chainx.org and app.subsocial.network it isn't working anymore

This might be related to these apps seeing an account of ecdsa/ethereum type and throwing an error. They should catch it and handle it. Have you opened an issue in their repo?

Also, related:
There might be a problem with addresses created with "Allow on any chain" that there are sr5519 and not ecdsa and therefore not really ethereum compatible. This should be corrected in the UI (sr5519 hidden when in displaying in ecdsa format -or display warning, and hide in the same way ecdsa in sr5519 context, and also when creating address not say "allow use on any chain" when really it should be on "any sr5519 chain").

[polkadot-js-bot]

This issue has been open for 21 days with no activity and is not labelled as an enhancement. It will be closed in 7 days.

[joelamouche]

@Poggi-Luca Do you mind trying again?

[polkadot-js-bot]

This issue has been open for 21 days with no activity and is not labelled as an enhancement. It will be closed in 7 days.

[Luca-Poggi]

@Poggi-Luca Do you mind trying again?

I can see that polkadot js extension was updated to v0.42.2
So I tried again with the above procedure to reproduce the issue (imported a Moonbase Alpha account and set "use only on Moonbase Alpha"), the results were:

• dapps.chainx.org --> still doesn't work
• app.subsocial.network --> works correctly

So at this point I think that it is a problem related to a single application

[polkadot-js-bot]

This issue has been open for 21 days with no activity and is not labelled as an enhancement. It will be closed in 7 days.

[polkadot-js-bot]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue if you think you have a related problem or query.