The purpose of this tutorial is to show how MetaMask Chrome plugin can be utilized to ease basic wallet operations with the Ethereum Classic network. Acknowledgements are directed to MetaMask folks for creating this plugin and special thanks to Dan Finlay for his promptness and support toward Ethereum Classic community.
Download latest geth for your operating system (OS)
https://github.com/ethereumproject/go-ethereum/releases/latest
In case your OS is linux
After downloading geth to Downloads folder, open a terminal and enter Downloads folder. Then enter the following command in the terminal to install geth:
sudo cp geth /usr/bin
Test installation with the following commands:
cd ..
geth version
The expected result is:
Geth
Version: v3.4.0
Protocol Versions: [63 62]
Network Id: 1
Go Version: go1.8
OS: linux
GOPATH=
GOROOT=/usr/local/go
Run geth with the following command:
geth --rpc
When you first create a vault, you will be prompted to save a certain number of seed words. These words can be used by MetaMask to regenerate your vault if need be, as well as enabling the creation of new wallets within your vault. Store these seed words somewhere safe! Although MetaMask gives you the option to see your seed words, we recommend storing your seed words physically in the event that the MetaMask software fails. MetaMask is still in its development stage, so we don’t recommend storing large amounts of ETC in your MetaMask wallets just yet.
Moving forward, you should be taken to your first wallet, which looks something like this:
- Pink: This is your editable wallet nickname. Underneath is a portion of the public key, or the hexadecimal address that uniquely identifies your wallet.
- Teal: These buttons copy your wallet address to the clipboard and allow you to export your private keys.
- Red: This indicates the current network. Clicking it will open a drop down menu to switch to the Main Ethereum Network, the Morden Test Network, or your own network of choice. Choose localhost:8545 for Ethereum Classic
- Green: This button will take you to a page that will allow you to switch accounts.
Below the current wallet information is a list of outgoing transactions from the current wallet with relevant information. Clicking the transaction itself will link you to an etherscan page with more detailed information. Sending ether to another address is simple. MetaMask will help guard you against sending to invalid addresses, as well as initiating transactions that send more ether than the current wallet contains. Before a transaction is actually executed, a notification pops up allowing you to confirm the transaction and examine relevant details. Don’t worry if you close the notification , the extension popup will prompt you to approve or reject any pending transactions the next time it’s opened.
Here, the accounts page shows an overview of your current wallets, a convenient button to copy wallet addresses, as well as the option to generate more wallets as needed.
Up to this point you have created an Ethereum account with MetaMask that will also work with Ethereum Classic. Pay attention MetaMask informs always the amount of ethers with ETH letters regardless if using Ethereum Classic or Forked Ethereum.
Stop the geth client and restart with the following command in the terminal:
geth --rpc --mine --etherbase=0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Where instead of 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 you should put the address of your ETC wallet given by MetaMask.
In this tutorial the usage of MetaMask for Ethereum Classic was detailed covering the Go Ethereum client (geth) basic utilization, Ethereum Classic wallet creation through MetaMask, and mining classic ethers with MetaMask enabled.