diff --git a/src/main/java/tools/HexTool.java b/src/main/java/tools/HexTool.java
index 03ae30e755..e6bb0ce0f4 100644
--- a/src/main/java/tools/HexTool.java
+++ b/src/main/java/tools/HexTool.java
@@ -25,7 +25,9 @@ import constants.string.CharsetConstants;
 import io.netty.buffer.ByteBufUtil;
 
 import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
+import java.util.HexFormat;
 
+// TODO: use HexFormat from Java 17
 public class HexTool {
     private static final char[] HEX = {'0', '1', '2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', 'A', 'B', 'C', 'D', 'E', 'F'};
 
@@ -44,12 +46,19 @@ public class HexTool {
         return hexed.substring(0, hexed.length() - 1);
     }
 
-    public static String toCompressedString(byte[] bytes) {
-        StringBuilder hexed = new StringBuilder();
-        for (byte aByte : bytes) {
-            hexed.append(toString(aByte));
-        }
-        return hexed.substring(0, hexed.length());
+    /**
+     * Convert a hex string to its byte array representation. Two consecutive hex characters are equivalent to one byte.
+     *
+     * @param hexString Hex string to convert to bytes. Hex character pairs may be delimited by a space or not (compact)
+     *                  Example: "01 10 7F FF" is converted to {1, 16, 127, -1}.
+     * @return The byte array
+     */
+    public static byte[] toBytes(String hexString) {
+        return HexFormat.of().parseHex(removeAllSpaces(hexString));
+    }
+
+    private static String removeAllSpaces(String input) {
+        return input.replaceAll("\\s", "");
     }
 
     public static byte[] getByteArrayFromHexString(String hex) {
@@ -85,6 +94,7 @@ public class HexTool {
                 baos.write(nextb);
             }
         }
+        // return toBytes(hex);
         return baos.toByteArray();
     }
 
diff --git a/src/test/java/tools/HexToolTest.java b/src/test/java/tools/HexToolTest.java
index 8ea59c403a..6f5a2ec3ef 100644
--- a/src/test/java/tools/HexToolTest.java
+++ b/src/test/java/tools/HexToolTest.java
@@ -1,11 +1,45 @@
 package tools;
 
+import org.junit.jupiter.api.Disabled;
 import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
 
+import java.util.Arrays;
+
+import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertArrayEquals;
 import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.assertEquals;
 
 class HexToolTest {
 
+    @Test
+    void bytesToHexString() {
+        byte[] bytes = new byte[]{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 127, -1};
+        String expectedHexString = "01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F 10 11 7F FF";
+        assertEquals(expectedHexString, HexTool.toString(bytes));
+    }
+
+    @Test
+    void hexStringWithSpacesToBytes() {
+        String hexString = "01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 0A 0B 0C 0D 0E 0F 10 11 7F FF";
+        byte[] expectedBytes = new byte[]{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 127, -1};
+        assertArrayEquals(expectedBytes, HexTool.getByteArrayFromHexString(hexString));
+    }
+
+    @Test
+    void compactHexStringToBytes() {
+        String hexString = "0102030405060708090A0B0C0D0E0F10117FFF";
+        byte[] expectedBytes = new byte[]{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 127, -1};
+        assertArrayEquals(expectedBytes, HexTool.getByteArrayFromHexString(hexString));
+    }
+
+    @Test
+    @Disabled("The original method does not work this way, this test should be removed!")
+    void compactShortHexStringToBytes() {
+        String hexString = "0 2 3 4 5 A F";
+        byte[] expectedBytes = new byte[]{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15};
+        System.out.println(Arrays.toString(HexTool.getByteArrayFromHexString(hexString)));
+        assertArrayEquals(expectedBytes, HexTool.getByteArrayFromHexString(hexString));
+    }
+
     @Test
     void upperCaseHexToBytesAndBack() {
         String hex = "A1B2C3";