Ephemeral accounts are temporary blockchain accounts created for a single ramp. The SDK creates up to three per ramp — one Stellar, one Substrate (Pendulum), one EVM (Moonbeam). They may hold funds in transit while Vortex coordinates swaps, transfers, bridge operations, or payment settlement.Vortex receives only ephemeral public addresses. Vortex does not receive, store, log, or reconstruct ephemeral secret keys.This is a critical integration responsibility:The API client or SDK environment must store ephemeral secrets securely.
Secrets must remain available until the ramp is complete and any recovery window has passed.
Secrets must never be sent to Vortex endpoints, support channels, logs, analytics, or browser-visible code.
If ephemeral secrets are lost, the partner may be unable to complete recovery for that ramp. Vortex has chain-specific cleanup workers that can sweep some residual funds, but partners should not rely on this as a primary recovery mechanism.
storeEphemeralKeys, which defaults to true. In Node.js environments, the SDK writes ephemerals_{rampId}.json to the process's current working directory. The file is not encrypted at rest and the path is not configurable in the current release.Treat those backup files as sensitive key material. Encrypt them at rest in production, restrict filesystem permissions, exclude them from source control, and define a retention policy that matches your operational recovery needs. Or, set storeEphemeralKeys: false and implement an equivalent secure backup mechanism.Direct API integrations must implement equivalent custody behavior. At minimum, they should create fresh ephemerals per ramp, store encrypted backups, associate backups with the ramp ID, and verify that recovery material exists before allowing the user to continue.
Modified at 2026-05-16 09:37:15
