Getting started with alpha-- a few questions

Technology zcashd client
1

Hello,

I’ve followed the Public Alpha Guide, and I’m up and running. The build passes testing.

I have a few questions.

(0) Is the Public Alpha Guide (linked to above) current?

(1) getinfo shows I have "connections" : 1. Is it normal to have only one connection with this version of the software?

(2) Is there an automated testnet faucet? I’ve generated address mpR3pZRskB3sEfAk28JhqPmb4EJhUspFh2 and would like to get some test coins for testing.

(3) Is it possible to mine my own test net coins so I don’t have ask? How is this done?

Thank you for any help. I appreciate it.

EDIT: I think I may have figured out (3): add gen=1 to bitcoin.conf. Not 100% sure about this though.

2

  1. Some details should be updated, but yes

  2. I was wondering about that as well…

  3. Yes. Generate address, as described in Home · zcash/zcash Wiki · GitHub then go to http://zcashfaucet.xyz/, enter your address and wait a few minutes.

  4. Yes, that’s right. But it takes some time to (a) mine the block and (b) for the zcash to appear in your wallet. Use ./src/zcash-cli listtransactions. The ones with "generated" : true and "category" : "immature" have been mined. They need, IIRC, 50 confirmations before they appear in the ./scr/zcash-cli listunspent

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Excellent, thank you.

4

@JanKalin Now that is some really helpful information I hadn’t seen in my digging through these forums!

The guide kind of glosses over the mining aspect by telling you to get coins from a faucet to play with. Some users like myself want to also see how our machine performs in mining and tweak our hardware/set up if we can.It would be great for that info and perhaps have a expanded mining section added to the Public Alpha guide.

Also, I’m still a bit fuzzy on the “50 confirmations” before the appear in the ‘listunspent’ command. Up until this point I have generated immature blocks but zero that show up as actually spendable.

5

About the confirmations, I was wrong: it’s 100. The thing is that this is built into the underlying Bitcoin protocol and the Alpha guide explains mostly the Zcash additions. Check out What was the goal of creating the feature of immature coins?

An yes, I agree that getting an estimate of hash rate is currently almost impossible. bitcoind (and thus zcashd) does not have that option.

Here’s partial output of ./src/zcash-cli listtransactions "" 1000

    {
        "account" : "",
        "address" : "mh1WQXmwsUVJEkRZP7khi3hmgk1q4Pjznp",
        "category" : "generate",
        "amount" : 40.00000000,
        "vout" : 0,
        "confirmations" : 101,
        "generated" : true,
        "blockhash" : "0006516e66d468cf40398ddf14329d5fee83b7f4d7b91137d316585b711b6751",
        "blockindex" : 0,
        "blocktime" : 1462987337,
        "txid" : "0a6d227f60924b55bffb9f1d36ba5c12432b0a4f13bea8ede7617280ad1775cf",
        "walletconflicts" : [
        ],
        "time" : 1462987337,
        "timereceived" : 1462987346
    },
    {
        "account" : "",
        "address" : "n1vRC3YdfRX8JNLrC4EFcp7A3bJri14j3A",
        "category" : "immature",
        "amount" : 40.00000000,
        "vout" : 0,
        "confirmations" : 95,
        "generated" : true,
        "blockhash" : "0008ac17cf3f2a5f3bebd5a8bd37b52e85d2f7979167af0682af12e7756fab0c",
        "blockindex" : 0,
        "blocktime" : 1462991550,
        "txid" : "71d64952af18632798130434fa614832657862898d7b9c6e9e1bcf3f44f0e0cb",
        "walletconflicts" : [
        ],
        "time" : 1462991550,
        "timereceived" : 1462991567
    },

Note the "category" and "confirmations" fields.