How to Backup Your Ethereum Wallet and the Blockchain

17 Aug
2015

ethereum-datadir-check-for-backup

Just like with Bitcoin’s wallet.dat file that contains your wallet address and keys and that you need to backup for safety reasons, Ethereum also has a similar wallet file that you should have a spare copy of. With Ethereum the wallet file has a bit weird name and is not just called wallet.dat, but it has essentially the same purpose and the file works essentially the same way as the wallet.dat with Bitcoin and many other alternative crypto coins. Ethereum’s wallet file is stored in the data directory used by the client to store the blockchain and other files, the default locations for the datadir on different operating systems are listed below.

Default datadir locations:
– Mac: ~/Library/Ethereum
– Linux: ~/.ethereum
– Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Ethereum

To get the full path of the data directory on your specific system you can run the geth console and type admin.datadir and you will see a result like on the screenshot above with the full path. Note that the wallet file is not stored in the main datadir folder, but is instead placed in a separate folder under it called keystore. Inside that folder you should see a file with a long name starting with UTC--2015..., this is the wallet file you need to backup. Do note that aside from the wallet file itself you will also need to remember the password (or also back it up along the wallet) that you set when creating your account, without the password needed to unlock it the wallet file won’t be of much use.

If you are moving your Ethereum installation over to a different computer or want to have a copy on another system for solo mining for example, aside from a copy of the wallet file you may also want to make a copy of the blockchain, so that the geth client will not need to download the whole thing again from the network. For the moment the Ethereum blockchain is not that big, but as it continues to grow it can become a very time consuming task to wait for the blockchain to download over the network like it already is with bitcoin for example. So here is how you can also export and then import the Ethereum blockchain should you need to do so.

Export and Import the Ethereum Blockchain:
– Run: geth export blockchain_backup
– Copy the blockchain_backup file to the new system (a bit over 60 MB for the moment)
– On the new system run: geth import blockchain_backup

You can also export and import the blockchain data from a geth console mode, however it seems that when ran inside the console it is doing it much slower than the above method. The commands for the Javascript console are admin.exportChain('blockchain_backup') and admin.importChain('blockchain_backup'), so you can try with them as well, but the first example should be faster.

– Download geth and ethminer compiled for Windows and ready to be used…

Track Ethereum (ETH) Prices with Ethereum Wisdom

16 Aug
2015

ethereum-wisdom

We are sure that most of you are using BitcoinWisdom as a great service to track the price movement of Bitcoin, Litecoin and maybe even some other altcoins as well as their other services such as difficulty charts or mining calculators. Well now it seems that there is a new service trying to do something similar but for Ethereum, the service is called Ethereum Wisdom and it shows real-time Ethereum (ETH) price for various markets (Kraken, Poloniex, Cryptsy, Bittrex and more) and various currencies (BTC, LTC, USD, EUR). It is not as advanced as Bitcoin Wisdom, but can provide you with a quick overview on what is currently happening with the price of Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) coins across the exchanges in a single window without having to check them individually. So we recommend that you give the service a try if you are mining or trading Ethereum coins.

– To check out the service tracking Ethereum (ETH) prices across the exchanges…

Some Updates and Additional Tips for Mining Ethereum

14 Aug
2015

ethpool-no-new-users-accepted

Mining for Ethereum’s Ether (ETH) coins is turning out to be a problem as it is still in its very early stages, it is still hard for non-advanced users to get started with it. Evven when you follow a guide like our guide on How to Mine Ethereum on Windows yuo can get to another challenge like the mining pool refusing your connections. This has happened today with the ethpool stopping to accept new miners resulting in connections for users trying to use new wallet addresses getting refused while all older miners can still continue to use the pool. The problem here is that ethpool is still the only Ethereum mining pool, so now the only alternative for new users is to solo mine – we have prepared a guide on getting started with Solo GPU Mining Ethereum on Windows. With solo mining however the risks are higher, but the rewards can also be higher if you turn up lucky, there is however no point in solo mining with CPU as the hashrate will be pretty low and you will need a lot of luck to hit a block.

We have updated our mining package that includes the geth client for generating a local Ethereum wallet and also needed for solo mining to the latest version, it is compiled for 64-bit Windows. The package also includes two versions of ethminer (also 64-bit only), the standard one with CPU and OpenCL mining as a part of cpp-ethereum and a second one forked to support CUDA as well. Note that the CUDA version can be used to mine with the CPU, OpenCL and CUDA and you should be are able to use OpenCL on Nvidia GPU’s as well. The CUDA miner should work on GPUs with Compute 2.0 or later, but if you are having trouble running the CUDA miner you can try with the OpenCL one, the resulting hashrate should not be much different between the two implementations. Also we have discovered that adding the parameter “–gpu-batch-size 20” (without the quotes) to the CUDA version of ethminer (works with the OpenCL setting of that miner as well) can increase a bit the performance you get, so we have added it by default to the example bat files for the CUDA version. The hashrate improvement is actually pretty small on Nvidia GPU’s, but on AMD cards using OpenCL it can give better results. We got up from about 24.4 MHS on Radeon R9 280X to about 26.5 MHS by adding the parameter, be aware however that this parameter is only available in the CUDA fork of ethminer.

Another interesting tip regarding issues with low hashrate, either local or reported by the pool, is to try deleting the DAG files that are being generated the first time you run ethminer. Sometimes when you are playing with different settings for the miner it seems that the DAG files may not work that well, so deleting them and having the miner generate them again with the latest settings can bring back the usual performance. So if the locally reported hashrate by the miner suddenly drops or the pool reports only a small fraction of what your total hashrate should normally be you can try deleting the DAG files and having them generated again. On Windows you can find them located in the AppData / Local / Ethash folder under your computer’s Username in the Users folder (example: C:/Users/myPC/AppData/Local/ Ethash). You may need to enable the showing of hidden system files first in order to see the needed folders in Windows Explorer if you have not enabled it already.

– Download the latest geth and ethminer compiled for Windows and ready to be used…

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