12

I'm a novice. I'm looking for instructions on how to configure geth so it sends my mined eth to coinbase.

In my head, I think the process is:

  1. Sync the blockchain geth --datadir /data/ethData --autodag --verbosity 1
  2. wait for it to finish. Get an ETH address from https://www.coinbase.com/addresses geth --etherbase '0xa4d8e9cae4d04b093aac82e6cd355b6b963fb7ff' --mine
  3. Profit!

Is that correct?

Albert T. Wong
  • 241
  • 1
  • 2
  • 5

4 Answers4

14

here's what I do on my private Ethereum Testnets (you don't need to create your own network though):

  1. Starting the geth node and entering the JS Console

    geth --networkid XXXX console

  2. Creating an account. You'll be asked to provide a passphrase.

    personal.newAccount()

  3. Defining your initial/primary account as coinbase:

    miner.setEtherbase(eth.accounts[0])

  4. Verify coinbase:

    eth.coinbase

After that's done you can either exit the JS Console or start the mining process by:

miner.start()

In case DAG wasn't created, it should automatically be created.

I hope this helps and answers your question!

Cheers

Borinho
  • 544
  • 2
  • 12
  • Looks like you always create a new account on each worker. Is that correct? If so, that means you move the eth generated from each account/worker to coinbase at a later time. Is that also a correct assumption? – Albert T. Wong Feb 15 '17 at 17:00
11

Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. But...

...I think you're conflating two ideas here.

coinbase.com is a trading/exchange site, which relatively recently added ETH to the currencies it sells.

A coinbase account - which Ethereum also calls the etherbase - is by default the primary local account. This can, however, be set to any address you wish - it doesn't have to be an account you created on your local machine.

References:

Richard Horrocks
  • 37,835
  • 13
  • 87
  • 144
  • 1
    Right, totally forgot to take a coinbase.com account into my answer. Thanks for pointing this out here! – Borinho Feb 15 '17 at 12:52
  • 1
    Should you always have a local account for each worker? – Albert T. Wong Feb 15 '17 at 16:59
  • 1
    If there isn't a local etherbase account already set up, or if you haven't specified an account (local or otherwise) in the command you use to start the miner, it won't start. Have a look at the instructions at https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Mining – Richard Horrocks Feb 15 '17 at 17:08
  • 1
    In case it's not clear: Yes, you can create a local etherbase (coinbase) account before you start mining, or you can specify an account/address which you haven't created on your machine, like you specified in your question. – Richard Horrocks Feb 15 '17 at 17:10
4

If you want a constant coinbase among all nodes, you can simply set the etherbase manually as follows:

miner.setEtherbase('0xa4d8e9cae4d04b093aac82e6cd355b6b963fb7ff');

AFAIK, you don't even need to have a keystore file, i.e. the specified account does not need to be in eth.accounts, but I'm not sure about this.

jeff
  • 2,550
  • 2
  • 18
  • 40
1

Yes, that's correct. Etherbase is the "target" account for where to put the reward from mining.

It's a miner setting:

MINER OPTIONS:
  --mine                    Enable mining
  --minerthreads value      Number of CPU threads to use for mining (default: 8)
  --etherbase value         Public address for block mining rewards (default = first account created) (default: "0")
  --targetgaslimit value    Target gas limit sets the artificial target gas floor for the blocks to mine (default: 4712388)
  --gasprice "18000000000"  Minimal gas price to accept for mining a transactions
  --extradata value         Block extra data set by the miner (default = client version)

You can specify it when running Geth like this:

geth --mine --etherbase 0xa4d8e9cae4d04b093aac82e6cd355b6b963fb7ff --gasprice "1000000000"

gasprice is the minimum price for executing transactions. It's a function of the load on the network.

rustyx
  • 910
  • 7
  • 15