Heads up to anyone who’s still viewing this thread:
In September the sdk (DFX) changed from generating Ed25519 identities to Secp256k1 identities.
feat: secp256k1 keys (#2499) · dfinity/sdk@4f10e12 · GitHub, which was included in 0.12.0-beta.2, and then eventually released with 0.12.0, (see the documentation site release notes)
For example, if I go back to DFX < 0.12.0, generate an identity with dfx identity new <alias>, this solution will work, but if one uses any newer versions of dfx that uses different key generation, it will break.
@AdamS @anon74414410 Are there any node based solutions in agent-js or elsewhere for pulling in the new Secp256k1 identities from a dfx >=0.12.0 generated pem file?
Also I tried playing with the blueprint solution provided by the post directly above this one 
, but upon testing it with identities generated by dfx >= 0.12.0 I’ve found @hilljh82’s solution now produces a different identity (maybe it worked previously but there were a few changes made?).