Cold Wallet Generator Setup
The ScPrime project has UI and Command Line wallets available on nearly every platform. Many are unaware there is also a cold wallet implementation providing the highest level of security while also being the easiest to set up and configure. Cold wallets are typically used for coins the user has no intention of accessing for sale or transfer in the near future. This guide will show you how to setup a cold wallet on a ‘air gapped’ computer for maximum security.
Throughout this guide we will refer to a ‘hot computer’, which is connected to the internet and a ‘cold computer’ which is the ‘air gapped’ system that is not connected to the internet.
You will need to unpack the zip file using 7zip, Winzip or any other similar software. Now STOP. At this point you have to decide if you want to turn your current hot computer into a cold computer, or if you want to transfer the cold wallet generator to another computer. If you want to turn the hot computer you are using into a cold computer, move onto the next step. If you’re transferring to a different computer, you will need to put ‘scprime-cold-storage.exe’ on a USB stick first.
Air gapping a computer can mean a few different things. At its simplest, it means the computer is not connected to a network. You can take it a lot further with physically removing network cards, USB ports, hard drives, etc., but for our purposes, disabling the network adapter should serve well enough. The instructions below are for Windows users, but will look to add instructions for Mac and Linux if required.
On your cold computer, search for ‘device manager’ and open it.
You will want to open the Network adapters dropdown and find your wireless adapter. You may also want to disable any bluetooth adapter as well.
Right click on the adapter/adapters you want to disable and then click on ‘Disable device’ from the drop down.
You should confirm your cold computer is no longer on a network by checking the connection status in the taskbar. It’s also a good time to reboot your cold computer and once again confirm there is no network connection.
Now it’s time to generate the key and addresses for your cold wallet. As discussed above, this step should be done on your cold computer, whether you transferred the generator from your hot computer to your cold computer using a USB stick or you turned your hot computer to a cold computer.
Ensuring you are not connected to a network, run scprime-cold-storage.exe.
A browser window will open with a similar output as above. You will need to record the seed and addresses. Seeing as you are on a cold computer with no network connection, you can either plug in a printer directly and print the above, or hand copy it down. I can not stress the need to double and triple check the seed and at least one or two addresses if you choose to hand copy it. Once this is done, keep the seed and addresses in a secure location. Don’t stress much about getting all the addresses. You will most likely only use one.
Note: You may need to add the cold wallet executable as an exception on your computer's firewall to use this wallet. If you run this file and get an error, add
scprime-cold-storage.exe to your firewall's exception list. With your cold wallet ready to go, you can now receive SCP (and SPF) to its addresses. If someone wants to send you SCP, just give them one of the addresses you recorded. You can also send SCP to that wallet from another wallet using the ScPrime UI or lite wallet, or from an exchange where you purchased SCP.
Above you can see I am sending 1 SCP to the first address from the cold wallet using the ScPrime Lite Wallet.
Being a cold wallet, you cannot access your funds until you convert it to a hot wallet. Until then, you can check the balance of your cold wallet using the ScPrime Explorer.
Enter the address you have been using to send funds to your cold wallet in the search bar.
As you can see, the 1 SCP sent in the above example is now in the cold wallet. Please be aware if you use multiple addresses from the cold wallet, you will have to enter them as well to get the full balance.
When you need to access the SCP in the cold wallet, the process is to enter the seed into a live UI or Command Line wallet.
To convert your cold wallet to hot using the ScPrime UI, follow the instructions in this guide and use the ‘Restore from seed’' option.
To convert your cold wallet to hot using the Command Line, you will want to open up a command prompt and navigate to the folder where spc.exe is located. Location can vary depending on the OS and age of installation. For Windows it will most likely be in the appdata folder under ScPrime-UI or SiaPrime-UI. On my system, it was a SiaPrime-UI folder as shown below.
Once there, type spc wallet init-seed and press Enter. You will then be prompted for your seed. If the computer previously had another wallet/seed on it, you will want to add the double dash and then force after, to replace that seed with your cold wallet’s one.
updated 1/4/22 v1.22
Last modified 1yr ago