Hydra for Beginners

Quick guide to getting started

We'll begin with creating a secure wallet using the HYDRA Web Wallet which can be found at https://webwallet.hydrachain.org. Click 'Create from Mnemonic' and record the Mnemonic words on a piece of paper. Once you have confirmed your Mnemonic words you can then continue and reveal your private key. The Mnemonic words along with your private key and key file should be stored somewhere extremely safe such as written down on a piece of paper and locked in safe. After setting up a wallet client you can proceed to Import the private key into the HYDRA wallet.

Next we will download the HYDRA wallet client and blockchain node. Upon first installation and initialization, the software will generate a new and unique wallet for you, if you don't have one already. You can choose from the options below depending on your system type:

Please note that it is highly recommended NOT to stake HYDRA on a computer that you use on a daily basis since this computer has a risk of being compromised without your knowledge.

For inexperienced users who are looking for a way to create a relatively safe staking environment, we highly recommend the "Staking in the cloud with Windows VPS in AWS" guide.

Installers

Windows:

32bit 64bit (Please follow THIS guide)

Raspberry Pi:

Arm 64bit Aarch64 Linux (Please follow THIS guide)

Arm 32bit Raspberry Pi OS (Please follow THIS guide)

Linux:

Ubuntu 20.04 Linux (Please follow THIS guide)

Ubuntu 18.04 Linux (Please follow THIS guide)

Mac OS:

64bit (Please follow THIS guide)

On Windows the Testnet (port 13333) and MainNet (port 3338) versions will be available in the start menu. It is recommended to open these ports in your operating system and on your router's port forwarding page. There is a tutorial on opening windows ports in THIS section. In Linux operating systems you can create a directory called Hydra and place the zipped file here:

mkdir ~/Hydra 
cd ~/Hydra/
wget -N https://github.com/Hydra-Chain/node/releases/download/hydra_v0.20.18/hydra-0.20.18-ubuntu20.04-x86_64-gnu.zip

Unzip the build:

 unzip -o hydra-0.20.18-ubuntu20.04-x86_64-gnu.zip

The binaries will then be in ~/Hydra/bin/ where you can cd into

 cd ~/Hydra/bin/

Either run the command-line daemon (omit '-testnet' if you want to connect to mainnet):

./hydrad -daemon -testnet

and call the daemon with:

./hydra-cli -testnet getinfo

Or you can run the GUI using:

./hydra-qt -testnet

Importing your private key

After creating a wallet at https://webwallet.hydrachain.org/ and clicking 'Create from Mnemonic' and saving your key and Mnemonic information somewhere safe, there are several ways to import your key into the wallet. The most common is through the client interface:

To import your HYDRA private key on the wallet GUI click 'Help' and then 'Information window'

A new window will pop up where you can select 'Console' from above. Insert your key with 'importprivkey ' preceding it.

The wallet may take some time to scan the blockchain and import your new address.

After scan has completed, 'null' will be displayed. This indicates that your import has been successful.

Your new HYDRA wallet has been imported

For safety it is recommended to encrypt and backup your wallet. Click 'Settings' and then 'Encrypt Wallet'

Set an extremely strong password and write it down somewhere safe so that you will be able to recover it later. You can use a password generator such as: https://www.lastpass.com/password-generator

Verify that you have backed up the password somewhere safe and click 'Yes'

The wallet will now close to finish the encryption process.

Please proceed to back up your new wallet by clicking 'File' and then 'Backup Wallet'. Save the file 'Wallet.dat' somewhere secure.

Adding the LOC token contract to see your token balance

In order to see your LOC token balance you will need to add the contract address to your wallet.

Click on 'HRC Tokens' above and then click 'Add Token'.

In the area marked 'Contract Address' paste in this LOC contract address:

4ab26aaa1803daa638910d71075c06386e391147

You can view and confirm the contract address on the explorer page Here.

The Token name and symbol will automatically fill out if you have copied the contract correctly. Now under 'Token Address' click the dropdown arrow and select the address which you have the tokens in or plan to have the tokens sent to.

Now click 'Confirm' and you should see the token appear on the left side of the screen. If you have any tokens it will show the amount here.

You may see a window pop up suggesting you allow log events to view token transactions, log events can be enabled by navigating to Settings -> Options -> Main -> and ticking 'Enable log events'.

Importing your key using the cli in Linux:

On systems running Linux you can use the command line operation to import your private key. Firstly insure that the ./hydrad is running then navigate to where the binaries are located and execute ./hydra-cli importprivkey <key>

~/Hydra/bin/./hydra-cli importprivkey cQLK6PfD8dbQnt1EuKoLEXTWGBTHEAYFLERapf7ZqqtPKEkCsW1d

The key and matching address will now be integrated into your wallet. In Linux your wallet is stored in ~/.hydra/ where you can manually back up the wallet.dat file to a secure place. It is recommended to set a password for your wallet and unlock it for staking.

Congratulations! Your HYDRA wallet should now be up and running and ready for staking rewards!