How to Sign Messages, Send Transactions, and Get Balance in EVM using AppKit with Ethers

Learn how to use Reown AppKit for essential wallet functionalities such as signing messages, sending transactions, and retrieving wallet balances.

In this recipe, you will learn how to:

• Retrieve the balance of the connected wallet
• Sign a message using a connected wallet
• Send a transaction to the EVM blockchain

This guide takes approximately 20 minutes to complete.

Let’s dive in!

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Prerequisites

• A fundamental understanding of JavaScript and React.
• A minimal installation of AppKit in React.
• Obtain a new project Id on Reown Cloud at https://cloud.reown.com

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Final project

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AppKit Minimal Installation

You can start a small project following the guidelines from our installation React docs using Ethers

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Start building

In this guide we are going to use the library Ethers to make calls to the blockchain and to interact with the wallet.

To get the balance, sign a message and send a transaction follow the same steps in each operation:

1. Start by importing the BrowserProvider object, some AppKit hooks to get the account information, chain id and the Provider.

import {
  useAppKitAccount,
  useAppKitProvider,
  useAppKitNetworkCore,
  type Provider,
} from "@reown/appkit/react";
import {
  BrowserProvider,
  JsonRpcSigner,
  formatEther,
  parseUnits,
} from "ethers";

2. Use the useAppKitAccount hook to retrieve the user’s address and check if they are connected. The useAppKitNetworkCore hook to get the chain id and the useAppKitProvider hook to get the wallet provider.

// AppKit hook to get the address and check if the user is connected
const { address, isConnected } = useAppKitAccount();
// AppKit hook to get the chain id
const { chainId } = useAppKitNetworkCore();
// AppKit hook to get the wallet provider
const { walletProvider } = useAppKitProvider < Provider > "eip155";

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Get Balance

Fetching a user’s balance is straightforward using the BrowserProvider object from ethers.

3. Create a function to fetch and display (in console) the balance when triggered

// function to get the balance
const handleGetBalance = async () => {
  const provider = new BrowserProvider(walletProvider, chainId);
  const balance = await provider.getBalance(address);
  const eth = formatEther(balance);
  console.log(`${eth} ETH`);
};

4. Finally, to call the function you can show the button in a component when isConnected is true

return (
  isConnected && (
    <div>
      <button onClick={getBalance}>Get Balance</button>
    </div>
  )
);

​

Sign a message

To raise the modal to sign a message with your wallet. You can follow with these steps:

3. Generate the function to raise the modal to sign the message

// function to sing a msg
const handleSignMsg = async () => {
  // create the provider and signer
  const provider = new BrowserProvider(walletProvider, chainId);
  const signer = new JsonRpcSigner(provider, address);
  // sign the message
  const signature = await signer?.signMessage("Hello Reown AppKit!");
  // log the signature
  console.log(signature);
};

4. Finally, to call the function:

return (
  isConnected && (
    <div>
      <button onClick={handleSignMsg}>Sign Message</button>
    </div>
  )
);

​

Send a transaction in EVM

In order to raise the modal to sign and send a transaction with your wallet. You can follow with these steps:

3. Create the test transaction

// test transaction
const TEST_TX = {
  to: "0xd8da6bf26964af9d7eed9e03e53415d37aa96045" as Address, // vitalik address
  value: parseUnits('0.0001', 'gwei')
}

4. Generate the function to raise the modal to send the transaction

// function to send a TX
const handleSendTx = async () => {
  // create the provider and signer
  const provider = new BrowserProvider(walletProvider, chainId);
  const signer = new JsonRpcSigner(provider, address);

  // send the transaction
  const tx = await signer.sendTransaction(TEST_TX);
  // log the transaction
  console.log(tx);
};

4. Finally, to invoke the function:

return (
  isConnected && (
    <div>
      <button onClick={handleSendTx}>Send Transaction</button>
    </div>
  )
);

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Conclusion

By following this guide, you’ve learned how to integrate Reown AppKit and Ethers in your React application to perform essential wallet operations. You can now fetch wallet balances, sign messages, and send transactions seamlessly in an EVM-compatible blockchain environment.

Keep exploring AppKit to enhance your dApp’s functionality and user experience!