What is the difference between web3.eth.accounts.create and web3.eth.personal.newAccount

Question

As I understand when using web3.eth.accounts.create(), it doesn't add the account to chain (I'm using ganache-cli for testing), but web3.eth.personal.newAccount() does.

Is it the main purpose or is it a bug? Is there other differences?

web3.js version: 1.0.0-beta.34

Answer 1

Both versions create a new account on the blockchain. The difference is how you interact with the node and having access to the private key. If you have a local node, you can use web3.eth.accounts.create which will create the account and provide you access to the private key generate so it can be stored locally. However, since returning the private key over a connection isn’t secure, you should never use this approach to create an account if you connect through a provider like Infura.

On the other hand, you can use web3.eth.personal to create a new account on a remote node. In this case, the private key will not be returned to you, so you lose some flexibility with accessing your account. When you don’t have the private key, you can’t sign transactions locally. In order to run transactions, you have to call unlockAccount on the remote node. Note that you have to send your password to create/unlock your account using web3.eth.personal, so you still need to make sure you using a secure connection.

Review this Medium blog post for additional info.