Neptune

How to avoid losing funds

2023-08-09

We’ve all heard the stories about people losing or throwing away their Bitcoin. Let’s at least attempt to avoid this with Neptune!!

Neptune Core stores cryptographic data in two files: wallet.dat and incoming_randomness.dat.

The short version is that you need to back up your wallet.dat only once, and the incoming_randomness.dat each time you receive a transaction. Both these files are located in your data directory, which can be found in ~/.local/share/neptune/<network>/wallet/ if you use the default settings on a Linux machine. If you’re unsure what you data directory is, it’s value is in the 1st line that is printed when you start neptune-core.

The wallet.dat file never changes, but the incoming_randomness.dat gets a new line every time you receive or mine a transaction!

So to be safe, you need to back up wallet.dat and you need to back up incoming_randomness.dat with each transaction that you receive. Provided these two files are backed up correctly, you will not lose any funds. wallet.dat should be backed up to a media that’s not connected to the internet, and incoming_randomness.dat should be backed up with a solution that can sync the file over a secure network.

For each transaction you receive, you need to update your backup of incoming_randomness.dat.

To elaborate a bit on this, wallet.dat contains the secret key that is used to unlock the lock script that allows you to spend your UTXO. This secret key is provided as the “secret input” when executing the Triton VM whose STARK engine generates a cryptographic proof that you are allowed to spend this UTXO.

incoming_randomness.dat contains the sender_randomness which is a component that keeps your transactions private. The sender_randomness is a component of the canonical_commitment which constitute the leafs of the append-only commitment list that is a part of the “mutator set” data structure.

Rule of thumb for Neptune security

If someone sees your wallet.dat they take your coins
If someone sees your incoming_randomness.dat they can identify your transactions
If you lose your wallet.dat, you lose your coins
If you lose your incoming_randomness.dat, you lose your coins.

When does the ICO start?

2023-09-13

When does the ICO start? When does the ICO start? When does the ICO start?

alphanet-v3

2023-08-09

Alphanet v3 has been pushed to GitHub and is up and running.

Alphanet v3 is a hardfork, so all previous blockchain data must be discarded. This is a hardfork due to an update to the serialization implementation BFieldCodec.

Since alphanet coins are worthless and alphanet-v3 is a restart of the blockchain from genesis, you can simply reset you node by running rm -rf ~/.local/share/neptune/ assuming default configurations. If you want to be a bit more finegrained in what you delete and you want to keep your receiving address see this guide: https://github.com/Neptune-Crypto/neptune-core/#restarting-node-from-the-genesis-block

So, to update, the following commands should do it:

First navigate to the directory, where you have the neptune-core git repo stored. Then:

rm -rf ~/.local/share/neptune/
git pull
cargo install --path .
RUST_BACKTRACE=1 RUST_LOG='info,tarpc=warn' neptune-core --mine --throttled-mining --peers 51.15.139.238:9798 --peers 139.162.193.206:9798

Please note that you normally do not want to delete your wallet.dat, incoming_randomness.dat, and outgoing_randomness.dat files. Basically, you should normally never delete anything in your wallet directory.

How to use this forum

2023-08-07

Software

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