Installing ZecWallet¶
Download and Install¶
ZecWallet runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and is available to download from the releases page of the project GitHub repository. Follow the instructions below for the platform of your choice to install ZecWallet. To compile from source see this section.
Windows instructions (click to expand)
Download and run the .msi installer (named Windows-installer-zecwallet-v0.8.0.msi) and follow the prompts. Alternately, you can download the release binary (named Windows-binaries-zecwallet-v0.8.0.zip), unzip it and double click on ZecWallet to start.
macOS instructions (click to expand)
Download the macOS release named macOS-zecwallet-v0.8.0.dmg
and double-click on the .dmg file to open it, and drag ZecWalleton to the Applications link to install. You will need to give authorisation for the program to run.
Linux instructions (click to expand)
If you are on Debian/Ubuntu, download the .deb package and install it.
sudo dpkg -i linux-deb-zecwallet-v0.8.0.deb
sudo apt install -f
Or you can download and run the binaries directly.
tar -xvf zecwallet-v0.8.0.tar.gz
./zecwallet-v0.8.0/zecwallet
Verifying the download¶
Starting from v0.5.10 all ZecWallet releases are signed and contain checksums that may be validated to ensure the integrity of the downloaded software. The current signatures and checksums are available to download via the signatures-v0.8.0.tar.gz file on the releases page.
Signatures¶
Import public key¶
The public key is available to download from the GitHub repository. Save the file and import via:
gpg --import public_key.asc
The public key fingerprint is C231 72D0 C956 9591 ECEC 8ECB 0E1E 9027 9521 EBB4
Alternatively, you can import from a keyserver using the following command:
gpg --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys 0E1E90.8.021EBB4
Verifying signatures¶
Once the key has been imported, you can run the following command to verify the signature:
gpg --verify <filename.sig> <downloaded-filename-to-verify>
Assuming a good signature, you will see a similar output to the below.
gpg --verify macOS-zecwallet-v0.8.0.dmg.sig macOS-zecwallet-v0.8.0.dmg gpg: Signature made Wed 20 Feb 11:06:04 2019 PST gpg: using RSA key C23172D0C9569591ECEC8ECB0E1E90.8.021EBB4 gpg: Good signature from "adityapk00 (PGP Key for zec-qt-wallet) <zcash@adityapk.com>" [full]
Checksums¶
The file sha256sum-v0.8.0.txt contains the SHA256 checksums for each download. You can verify that the file you downloaded matches this checksum via the following command:
sha256sum macOS-zecwallet-v0.8.0.dmg f818d42e2850050ff9fa22408f595d51855ceaa895336e67a0.8.061c339bc24 macOS-zecwallet-v0.8.0.dmg
zcashd¶
ZecWallet needs a Zcash node running zcashd. If you already have a zcashd node running, ZecWalletwill connect to it.
If you don’t have one running, ZecWalletwill start its embedded zcashd node.
Additionally, if this is the first time you’re running ZecWalletor a zcashd daemon, ZecWalletwill download the Zcash params (~1.7 GB) and configure zcash.conf for you.
Disable embedded zcashd
To force disabling the embedded zcashd and only connect to a remote node pass --no-embedded to the startup command.
System requirements¶
If using the embedded zcashd the recommended system requirements are 5GB of free RAM and 25GB of free disk (the size of the blockchain increases over time).
Compiling from source¶
ZecWallet is written in C++ 14, and can be compiled with g++/clang++/visual c++. It also depends on Qt5, which you can get from here. Note that if you are compiling from source, you won’t get the embedded zcashd by default. You can either run an external zcashd, or compile zcashd as well.
See the instructions for setting up a build environment and detailed build instructions for each platform here.
Upgrading¶
It is important to keep your version of ZecWallet up to date as new features are regularly added and bugs fixed. To download, follow the instructions to install as your data directory and wallet will be untouched throughout.
zcashd reaches end of service halt after 16 weeks
If you are using the embedded zcashd then after 16 weeks from release zcashd will reach an end of service halt and will shut down. Simply update your version of ZecWallet to continue as it will contain updated releases of zcashd.
ZecWallet also has an update notifier that will notify you if there’s a new release of ZecWallet available.