ethercheats

Cheatsheet for Private Ethereum Chains

Installation

Install geth from https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/. In Windows: Add installation path to environment variable PATH.

Create a folder for your Blockchain: blockChainFolder

Blockchain Creation

Create a genesis.json in your blockChainFolder. Use a random chainId, keep difficulty low to mine fast.

{
    "config": {
        "chainId": 2017,
        "homesteadBlock": 0,
        "eip155Block": 0,
        "eip158Block": 0
    },
    "difficulty": "0x10000",
    "gasLimit": "2100000",
    "alloc": {}
}

Create a private blockchain in your blockChainFolder with your shell:

geth —datadir="ethdata" init genesis.json

Create a network for the private blockchain and start a console, chose a random (high) networkid:

geth —datadir="ethdata" —networkid 20123 console

Now you have access to your blockchain via console.

Accounts and Balances

Create an account:

personal.newAccount('insertYourPasswordHere')

You receive an address like 0x29fbf84ff0f76d0b720d1b22de0aabd8779e362d.

Show all accounts:

eth.accounts

Assuming yours is the first in the list, you get your Balance with:

eth.getBalance(eth.accounts[0])

You can also pass your address directly to the getBalance function.

eth.getBalance('0x29fbf84ff0f76d0b720d1b22de0aabd8779e362d')

Mining

To get ether, we need to mine some blocks.

Bind the miner to your address:

miner.setEtherbase(eth.accounts[0])

To start mining:

miner.start()

Wait some time, then stop the miner with:

miner.stop()

Let's take a look how rich you are:

eth.getBalance(eth.accounts[0])

Transactions

Now create another account like explained above.

Unlock your account:

personal.unlockAccount(eth.accounts[0], 'insertYourPasswordHere')

It's time to spend your money:

eth.sendTransaction({from: eth.accounts[0], to: eth.accounts[1], value: 202020})

The money is not directly available in the second account, the transaction has to be mined first. So start and stop the miner as explained above and check out the balances.