Hi. I am new here. I am a newbie at cryptocurrency in general. So I’m sure many of my questions are probably going to sound very beginner. I’ve tried my best to educate myself before coming here.
Context: I have a macbook I plan on selling. I bought a bunch of different crypto currencies years ago, setup their respected wallets all on the same laptop. I pretty much have not opened any of them since then bought the coins and transferred them to my desktop wallets. I’ve decided to go with a ledger hardware wallet moving forward. Now I’m trying to open all these desktop wallets and transfer them over to my ledger.
Question: My ZCash wallet will not “Connect”. It shows a “No Connection” with a stop sign icon next to it in the bottom right corner. I’m assuming this is it trying to communicate with the network. Under the zecwallet menu preferences there is a “zcashd connection” tab with “Host/Port/RPC Username/PRC Password”. It looks like at one point I updated from zcash4mac and now I’m on ZecWallet v0.76. I also remember filling up my hard drive once by trying to download the entire blockchain (because I was new and didn’t know what I was doing). And this laptop doesn’t have much space left on it, so I’d prefer to avoid this issue. Please help.
Ok, so it sounds like you have already migrated your ZEC from zcash4mac to ZecWallet (which is good because zcash4mac is obsolete) and you had already gone through the process of syncing.
Zcash had a hard fork in December and v0.76 is not compatible since the Blossom upgrade.
First thing would be to update ZecWallet:
Try that and get back to us, if that doesn’t work there are other options to export your private keys to a new wallet.
There is even a lite version of ZecWallet which doesn’t require a Blockchain download: https://zecwallet.co
Thank you for your response. I first tried the lite version and it crashes. I then tried the full version you linked and it starts up. But it does still give me the same error that I originally reported. For clarification “No Connection”. Is the full version once I get it connected going to pull the entire blockchain?
The full version should be able to sync up to the most recent blockheight using most of the blockchain you have already downloaded, so it shouldn’t take up that much more space on your HDD.
Do you have antivirus software or a firewall that would be preventing ZecWallet from connecting to the internet?
No I do not have any antivirus software or firewall rules set, or VPN, or TOR, or DNScrypt, etc. That I can think of which might prevent it from connecting.
I am looking under the “Preferences” and the “zcashd connection” and all of the fields are blank. Maybe I should fill these in? I don’t know which Host to use or where to find this information. Do you have any suggestions? Or maybe this isn’t the issue at all? I’m just guessing.
@ChileBob had a similar issue with peer connections, I also talked to a guy on Discord with a seemingly similar peer connection issue and his solution was similar to ChiliBob’s but he deleted the repo and re-pulled and built it then it worked idk
Ok, I think I found the issue with it not connecting. It was because long time ago when I didn’t know what I was doing, I somehow configured it to basically store the blockchain information to an external hard drive because I ran out of space on my laptop. I found the hard drive and plugged it in, and it working/sync’ing the blockchain. Also the lite version works. Although I could use some help here. How can I get the 24 work phrase to start the lite version with? “Export private key”? I did that and it doesn’t look like a 24 word phrase?
So is what you are saying is; Don’t bother with the 24 word phrase in the “lite wallet” and just transfer from the full node wallet? Can I do that (or is it safe/recommended) to transfer before it is done sync’ing all of the blockchain?
Almost… sounds like the lite wallet is the one you should be using, it doesn’t need the blockchain etc so will fit on your computer.
However, if I’ve understood correctly, you have funds on the node wallet that need to be transferred, which means you’ll have to wait until its fully synced and then send the funds to your lite wallet.
Tread carefully, go slowly, try a small test amount first, just to be 100% sure this is what you want to do.
So I ran out of hard drive space to sync the blockchain and I’m only at 26%. I don’t think no matter how much clean up I do I’m going to be able to find that much hard drive space. So what are my options? Transfer before the blockchain finishes sync’ing? Or somehow figure out a way to login to the lite version with a different type of key/seed? Even if I can figure that out, will it recognize my funds in my wallet from the full node version?
If you need to access the funds in that wallet.dat file, you need to sync the whole blockchain. And it has to reach 100% sync. Anything less won’t let you spend the funds.
By the way, it doesn’t necessarily need to be the boot disk. You can sync the blockchain to any external drive, if that makes it easier for you, by using symlinks. If you are not technical enough for this, don’t try it of course
Another alternative approach is to move some files/folders (usually those containing videos etc) to an external drive so you can free enough space to sync the blockchain. After the blockchain is synced, send the funds to Zecwallet Lite. From then on, you can delete the Zecwallet Full Node and the Zcash blockchain, and then move your files/folders back to your internal drive.
Great recommendations, and actually already doing all of this. I’m currently looking for more external hard drives. My issue is most of them are already full from other wallets blockchains Guess it’s time to go and buy some more.
A note on the transfer funds before it finishes sync’ing. So it looks like it will let me do it? When I go to actually do it, it gives me a warning saying “Warning: You are about to transfer funds before the blockchain is completely sync’d. We can not guarantee it will be successful or accurate. Proceed with caution”
Was mostly waiting to hear some feedback from the community on how risky this is. I’m sure very, but none-the-less, still wanted to find out if anyone else has tried this.
Guess it’s time to go and buy some more.