Burst — Part 2: macOS Wallet Setup Tutorial

A Step-by-step introduction to getting the latest Burst Wallet running locally on your Mac.

Note: This article has been updated to reflect the most recent burst release, BRS 2.2.1. 6/23/18

With the huge influx of altcoins on everyone’s attention these days, it can be difficult to keep track of the different technologies and requirements for each one, especially for the newer and lesser known variety which lack the level of documentation and user-experience that come with the more popular projects.

In this tutorial I’ll walk through the steps required to get started with the Burst wallet on macOS. I’ll also include a link to a simple bash script which can be run that should take care of all the work for you, if you’re not one for seeing how the sausage is made. Skip to the section at the bottom named Quick Start to use a setup script I’ve provided which should be quicker than following each step below.

In my opinion the Burst wallet itself is great. It’s easy to use, well designed, and presents a number of options for the user. However, the initial installation and setup of the wallet on Mac wasn’t quite as simple as I’d hoped.

When getting started with Burst, the simplest option is just to use the online wallet offered by PoC Consortium or Burst-Team, both of which are accessible here. There is also a nice bundle for installing the wallet software on Windows which I’ve heard generally good things about.

Mac installs are slightly more difficult in that there is not currently a bundle for installs, and much of the information online is confusing or slightly outdated (Excluding this reddit post which was my primary guide).

Dependencies

There are a few dependencies you should check on prior to starting the install.

1. OSX 10.10 or higher
2. Sufficient disk space for the full blockchain (~8Gb or so)
3. The ability to leave your computer up and running for several hours (to synchronize the full blockchain)

Steps

1. Install Homebrew

The first step is installing Homebrew (brew) which is an excellent package manager for macOS. You can install it by opening a new terminal and running the following command. Note: You may be asked for your password in order to complete the install.

$ /usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

If you already have brew installed, it’s still good practice to make sure everything is up to date by entering $ brew update.

2. Install MariaDB

MariaDB is an open-source fork of the MySQL relational database. It will be used to store the blockchain and other relevant information for the wallet. You can install MariaDB by typing the following once brew has finished installing.

$ brew install mariadb

3. Start MariaDB and create a user for the wallet to use

You can use brew to start the MariaDB service for you by typing.

$ brew services start mariadb

Once that task has completed and MariaDB is up and running, you can log into MariaDB to create you new wallet database and add a user to manage it. Note: Your MariaDB server will likely not have a root password set. You should google and find how to set a new root password.

$ mysql -u root -p -h localhost

Once you’ve successfully logged into MariaDB, you can execute the following SQL commands.

CREATE DATABASE brs_master;
CREATE USER 'brs_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<YOUR PASSWORD>';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON brs_master.* TO 'brs_user'@'localhost';

Assuming your queries are executed without any issues you can exit the MariaDB console by typing \q and hitting Enter.

4. Installing the Java 8 SDK

This step was a bit confusing as brew would always like to give you the latest version of all packages. I’m not entirely sure if the latest version of Java will work without issue, but I didn’t want to risk it. First you need to install brew cask.

$ brew tap caskroom/versions

Next you can use brew cask to install a specific version of a package. So with cask installed you would run.

$ brew cask install java8

Dependency setup

5. Download and setup the wallet

You can download the wallet package from PoC Consortium here. Once you’ve unzipped the release (burstcoin-2.x.x.zip) you should open the directory and open the brs.properties file in the conf directory in a text editor. At the bottom of the file add the following lines.

DB.Url=jdbc:mariadb://localhost:3306/brs_master
DB.Username=brs_user
DB.Password=<YOUR PASSWORD>

These values are just telling the Java program where it can find and access the MariaDB database you set up in step 3.

6. Start the wallet

Finally it’s time to start the wallet. In your open terminal window make sure you’re in the same directory as the burst.sh startup script. If you run ls in your terminal window you should see a response like this.

In your terminal window you should use the following command to make sure you have permission to execute the startup script.

chmod +x burst.sh

Finally you can launch the wallet script. Note: You need to leave this terminal window up and running while the wallet synchronizes the full block chain which could take several hours.

./burst.sh

You should see a lot of output flying by pretty quickly as the wallet starts up.

7. Creating your account and signing in.

Assuming you see no obvious errors while the wallet is starting up. You should check to see if it’s successfully running by entering http://localhost:8125/index.html in your browser. You should see a page that looks like this.

Click the New? Create Your Account! button. The wallet should generate a list of words. WRITE THESE WORDS DOWN AND DO NOT SHARE THEM. These words are your passphrase and will be how you log into your wallet in the future. You’ll also need them in the future if you plan to do mining. Follow the confirmation step on the next page and click Next .

You should now see the wallet dashboard which looks like this.

Congratulations! You’re up and running.

8. Wait for the blockchain to download

Now that you have your wallet running locally and have created an account, you’ll need to wait for the blockchain to synchronize before you see your up to date burst balance. This may take quite a while depending on your connection speed. It took me ~15 hours, but I’ve heard others claim 1–3 days.

Take Note

Make sure you take note of your Account Id listed at the top and on the left side of the wallet. This address is how you will send/receive Burst in the future.

Quick Start

If you’d rather not bother with all the steps above, I’ve written a quick script to do all the work for you. Simply download a .zip of the code here and follow the few steps in the README.

Install Script

Good Luck! 👍🏻

If you liked this make sure you check out the rest of my series on Burst.

Part 1 — What is Burstcoin?

Part 2 — macOS Wallet Setup Tutorial

Part 3 — Proof-of-Capacity

Part 4 — Network Analysis

Part 5 — How to Buy Burst

Part 6 — The Burst Dymaxion Explained

Donations are always appreciated:

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