This is a simple tutorial for non-technical people to onboard alchemist.wtf via CLI (command line interface)

setup

  1. if you're on windows, open PowerShell (always as admin) and run:

    Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted

  2. if you're on mac or linux, open a terminal window.

  3. run npm

    1. if no errors, go to item 4
    2. if errors, install node: https://nodejs.org/en/download/ and run npm again to check.

  4. run npm install --global yarn

The above steps might run into different problems, but these are so common that most people should have no problem solving them using google. The Stackoverflow results (when searching google for the error you get) are your best bet. Once you can open a terminal or powershell window and excecute both npm and yarn help with no errors, you're set up.

installing alchemist

Using your powershell or terminal window, navigate to the folder where you want to create a new folder named Alchemist. You will create this folder and install requirements via these commands:

  1. git clone <https://github.com/alchemistcoin/alchemist.git>
  2. cd alchemist
  3. yarn install

creating your account

Open the project folder in a file explorer. Rename the .example.env file to .env. If you're on windows, it might refuse to do so. Google is your friend, but most common steps are to "show file extensions" and use a decent text editor that lets you save a file as .env (https://code.visualstudio.com/download is good enough).

When you run this next command, you're going to generate a new eth address from a random mnemonic. The screen will show the address and mnemonic below. The mnemonic is the 12 words that appear after the word mnemonic. For example, if you see this:

address 0x12345678901234567890

mnemonic a b c d e f g h i j k l

Then your mnemonic is a b c d e f g h i j k l.

  1. run yarn hardhat generate inside the alchemist directory
  2. write down your mnemonic somewhere safe
  3. copy your mnemonic into the .env file (it should go right after DEV_MNEMONIC=' in between the two single quotes, like so: DEV_MNEMONIC='a b c d e f g h i j k l')
  4. save the file
  5. run yarn hardhat balance --network alchemist
  6. Verify that the address shown after the command above is the same as the one shown after step 1. If they're different, your mnemonic is wrong.

This should return your new address and the eth balance of that address.