Installing seid CLI

Complete guide to installing and setting up the Sei CLI (seid) tool, including wallet creation, EVM imports, and troubleshooting common installation issues.

What is seid CLI?

The seid CLI is the command-line tool to interact with Sei. It lets you manage wallets, send transactions, query network data, and perform validator operations.

Prerequisites

• Go 1.25.6 or later is required only when you build from source. For the exact requirement, read the go.mod file at the release tag that you check out below, for example v6.6.1. Prebuilt binaries have no prerequisites.

Installation

To install seid, find the version that you want on the sei-chain releases page. The table below lists the versions currently in use on Sei Mainnet and Sei Testnet.

Prebuilt binary (recommended)

Each release attaches a statically linked seid build for linux/amd64 with no runtime dependencies:

VERSION=<version-tag>  # e.g. v6.6.1 — see the version table above
FILE=sei-chain_${VERSION#v}_linux_x86_64.tar.gz  # asset filenames omit the leading v

curl -fLO https://github.com/sei-protocol/sei-chain/releases/download/${VERSION}/${FILE}
curl -fLO https://github.com/sei-protocol/sei-chain/releases/download/${VERSION}/checksums.txt

# Verify integrity before trusting the binary; extract and install only if it passes
sha256sum -c checksums.txt --ignore-missing \
  && tar -xzf ${FILE} seid \
  && sudo install -m 0755 seid /usr/local/bin/seid

Prebuilt binaries are attached from v6.6.1 onward. For earlier versions, build from source. The binaries are linux/amd64 only and omit hardware Ledger support. On other architectures, or if you sign with a Ledger device, build from source.

If you previously installed seid with make install, an older copy in $(go env GOPATH)/bin can shadow /usr/local/bin/seid, depending on your PATH order. which -a seid lists every copy.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/sei-protocol/sei-chain
cd sei-chain
git checkout <version-tag>
make install

To verify that seid is installed correctly, run this command:

seid version

Troubleshooting installation

If you built from source and get an error such as command not found: seid, you may need to set your GOPATH environment variable.

• To find your GOPATH, run go env GOPATH.
• Add these lines to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc file:

export GOPATH=[your GOPATH from step 1]
export PATH=$PATH:$GOPATH/bin

For more information, see GOPATH environment variable in the Go documentation.

Command overview

seid supports all the commands that you need to interact with the chain. To list the available commands with a short description of each, run seid:

seid
Start sei app

Usage:
  seid [command]

Available Commands:
  add-genesis-account      Add a genesis account to genesis.json
  add-wasm-genesis-message Wasm genesis subcommands
  blocktest                run EF blocktest
  collect-gentxs           Collect genesis txs and output a genesis.json file
  config                   Create or query an application CLI configuration file
  debug                    Tool for helping with debugging your application
  ethreplay                replay EVM transactions
  export                   Export state to JSON
  gentx                    Generate a genesis tx carrying a self delegation
  help                     Help about any command
  init                     Initialize private validator, p2p, genesis, and application configuration files
  keys                     Manage your application's keys
  log                      Runtime log management
  migrate                  Migrate genesis to a specified target version
  query                    Querying subcommands
  rollback                 rollback cosmos-sdk and tendermint state by one height
  snapshot                 Create a snapshot using the snapshot manager
  start                    Run the full node
  status                   Query remote node for status
  tendermint               Tendermint subcommands
  tools                    A set of useful tools for sei chain
  tx                       Transactions subcommands
  validate-genesis         validates the genesis file at the default location or at the location passed as an arg
  version                  Print the application binary version information

Flags:
  -h, --help                help for seid
      --home string         directory for config and data (default "~/.sei")
      --log_format string   The logging format (json|plain)
      --log_level string    The logging level (trace|debug|info|warn|error|fatal|panic)
      --trace               print out full stack trace on errors

Use "seid [command] --help" for more information about a command.

The compact, latest_version, and prune maintenance commands were removed in v6.6.0. To read the latest memIAVL version (the former latest_version), use seidb memiavl-latest-version. min-retain-blocks in the base app.toml and ss-keep-recent under [state-store] control historical-data retention.

Adding a wallet

To create a new wallet, use the seid keys command:

seid keys add $NAME

Output:

- name: [YOUR_KEY_NAME]
  type: local
  address: sei1[GENERATED_ADDRESS]
  evm_address: ""
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.crypto.secp256k1.PubKey","key":"[PUBLIC_KEY]"}'
  mnemonic: ""

**Important** write this mnemonic phrase in a safe place.
It is the only way to recover your account if you ever forget your password.

[YOUR_24_WORD_MNEMONIC_PHRASE]

Replace $NAME with the name that you want for this key. The command generates a seed phrase and stores the account in the CLI.

Write down this seed phrase and store it in a safe place. Never share your seed phrase with anyone.

To import an existing seed phrase instead, add the --recover flag:

seid keys add $NAME --recover

Output:

The command prompts you to enter your seed phrase. It then imports the existing wallet into the CLI.

> Enter your bip39 mnemonic
[ENTER_YOUR_EXISTING_MNEMONIC_PHRASE_HERE]

- name: [YOUR_WALLET_NAME]
  type: local
  address: sei1[RECOVERED_ADDRESS]
  evm_address: ""
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.crypto.secp256k1.PubKey","key":"[PUBLIC_KEY]"}'
  mnemonic: ""

EVM wallet compatibility

Understanding coin types

Sei supports two coin types:

• Coin type 118 (default): Standard Cosmos address format
• Coin type 60: Ethereum-compatible address format for EVM wallets

Creating an EVM-compatible wallet

To create a new wallet that is compatible with EVM wallets such as MetaMask, run this command:

seid keys add $NAME --coin-type=60

Output:

- name: [YOUR_KEY_NAME]
  type: local
  address: sei1[GENERATED_ADDRESS]
  evm_address: ""
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.crypto.secp256k1.PubKey","key":"[PUBLIC_KEY]"}'
  mnemonic: ""

**Important** write this mnemonic phrase in a safe place.
It is the only way to recover your account if you ever forget your password.

[YOUR_24_WORD_MNEMONIC_PHRASE]

evm_address is empty here because the CLI shows it only after the key first broadcasts a transaction or is associated on-chain. The 0x address is derived deterministically from the secp256k1 public key.

Importing an existing EVM wallet

To import an existing wallet from MetaMask or another EVM wallet, run this command:

seid keys add $NAME --coin-type=60 --recover

Output:

> Enter your bip39 mnemonic
> [ENTER_YOUR_EXISTING_MNEMONIC_PHRASE_HERE]

- name: [YOUR_WALLET_NAME]
  type: local
  address: sei1[RECOVERED_ADDRESS]
  evm_address: ""
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.crypto.secp256k1.PubKey","key":"[PUBLIC_KEY]"}'
  mnemonic: ""

The command prompts you to enter your existing 12-word or 24-word seed phrase.

To use the same address across EVM-compatible chains or to import from MetaMask, use coin type 60. For standard Cosmos operations, use the default coin type 118.

Managing wallets

To list all the wallets that you added to your local keyring, run this command:

seid keys list

Output:

- name: [YOUR_WALLET_NAME]
  type: local
  address: sei1[WALLET_ADDRESS]
  evm_address: [EVM_ADDRESS]
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.crypto.secp256k1.PubKey","key":"[PUBLIC_KEY]"}'
  mnemonic: ""
  ...

To see details about a specific wallet, run this command:

seid keys show $NAME

Output:

- name: [YOUR_WALLET_NAME]
  type: local
  address: sei1[WALLET_ADDRESS]
  evm_address: [EVM_ADDRESS]
  pubkey: '{"@type":"/cosmos.crypto.secp256k1.PubKey","key":"[PUBLIC_KEY]"}'
  mnemonic: ""

Deleting wallets

To delete a wallet or key, run this command:

seid keys delete $NAME

Output:

Key reference will be deleted. Continue? [y/N]: y
Key deleted forever (uh oh!)

This command removes the specified wallet from your local keyring. Be careful, because you cannot undo this action.

Uninstalling seid

To remove seid from your system, delete the binary from the location where you installed it:

# Prebuilt binary install
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/seid

# Build-from-source install
rm $(go env GOPATH)/bin/seid