Lectrum is a popular software wallet that makes it easy to manage multiple bitcoin wallets in one stop. Here's how to create your own wallet using electrum 3.0.6 and introduce the relevant bitcoin knowledge at each step.
Before you start, download the software from the official Electrom website.
The first step Electrum will first ask if you have any special preference to use that server.
To know that the Bitcoin blockchain data is distributed on the miners' servers all over the world, basically any server running a full node has all the bitcoin wallet information. Only servers in different places may have different delays.
Unless you have a strong reason: For example, you are a miner yourself, you want electrum to only look at your own miner; or you strongly believe in some miners, otherwise you can use Auto Connect.
Step 2 Create your wallet file
Step 3 Which type of wallet do you want to create?
- The most common - without any special security features, this will be used in this tutorial.
- 2 Factor Authenticated wallet
- Multi-signature wallet
- Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys
Points 2 and 3 should be explained together. In general, if you want to use the money in your wallet, you only need to sign it.
Multi-Signature wallet can be imagined as a joint account. You have a wallet with your wife. To use this wallet, you must sign it with your wife to send a valid transaction.
Electrum's 2 Factor Authenticated wallet is actually a multi-signature wallet. This wallet must have two people signing a transaction at the same time to take effect. One is you and the other is TrustedCoin.
2 Factor Authentication (2FA)'s two factors are Something you know, and Something you have.
Something you know is your password. Only with your password can you use your private key to sign a transaction.
Something you have is your call. You need to install Google Authenticator on your phone. Every time you want to sign a transaction, you need to make up the 6-digit password that Google Authenticator updates every minute.
The 6-digit number will be sent to TrustedCoin, which is the 2FA company designated by Electrum. TrustedCoin will check that your 6-digit password is correct before you can help sign the transaction.
Be aware that transactions issued with Electrom 2FA may have to pay a little more for transaction fees, so TrustedCoin also helps protect your wallet.
The advantage of using 2FA is that even if a hacker hacks into your computer and gets your password and Private Key, he can't confess your identity to sign the transaction. Unless the hacker is so powerful that even your phone steals and unlocks, the 2FA can't protect you...
The last one is to choose Import Bitcoin addresses or private keys. If you have used other wallets before and know what your private key is, you want to transfer it and use Electrum to click this, but you should pay attention to the method to copy you. The private key to the current computer, do not leave any traces.
Step 4 Create a new one, or reuse the old seed (seed)
The seed is a universal wallet format according to BIP-39 (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal-39). The use is to avoid the pain of the user remembering the Private key.
The private key is like this: E9113D79C6D87DC0FB6A5778633219G4453213303DA61F20FD67FC233WQ13222
If one day your computer's hard drive hangs and you don't remember the string of meaningless numbers, does your wallet disappear forever?!
BIP-39 has solved this problem for you. If you don't see the private key, you will be ok. The seed is a series of (12 to 24) English words that can be restored on any wallet that conforms to the BIP-39 standard as long as you can recite them sequentially.
Unless you have used a wallet like MyCelium/Trezor and feel that it is not good to use it, you want to switch to Electrum, otherwise you can choose "Create a new seed".
Step 5 Select which type of seed
The default is Standard, but I highly recommend everyone to use segwit!
Segwit (Segregation Witness) was a very hot feature at the end of 2017. At that time, Bitcoin core developer insisted on doing this function, but there were a lot of miners who opposed it. They thought that Segwit had to go online with 2x, and almost had to fork Bitcoin. At the last minute, the miners succumbed and gave up 2x.
The story of segwit and 2x is very exciting. I will write another introduction. In short, segwit is a feature strongly promoted by Bitcoin Core developer, which greatly improves the amount of transactions that Bitcoin network can process per second.
It takes a little time to go to the segwit century. If your home wallet doesn't support segwit during the transition period, you may not be able to trade. But don't worry, the coming will always come. In order to meet the beautiful post-segwit era, everyone will adapt as soon as possible.
Step 6 Remember your own seed
Although Electrum warned me of Never disclose your seed, I still let everyone see it for teaching purposes.
You must remember these 12 words, whether it is to write a piece of paper or use memory bread, in short, do not exist in the computer, after all, this seed is used to save your life when your computer hangs.
Step 7 Enter your password
Please be sure to use the password, otherwise the hacker will enter your computer, you can see your private key without the power of waste!
Finally press "Next" and you're done!
Basically, sending and receiving payments is very simple. See the interface instructions to do it.
The only thing that may not be clear is how to choose and calculate the Transcation Fee when sending money. However, due to the deeper working principle of bitcoin, Xiaobian will explain it in another article.
For the time being, you only need to know the more Transcation Fees you pay, and the faster the miners will handle your trading hours.