Beginners Guide: Desktop Wallet

[Mercury]

Part of the new Community Beginners Guide series.

Other guides in the series so far:

Beginners Guide: Intro. The purpose and directions behind the guides.

Beginners Guide: XRP First Steps. How to acquire your first XRP and other essential first steps.

Beginners Guide: Creating a Cold Ripple Wallet (2.0): Featuring the creation a cold/ paper wallet. This was formerly a service provided by Ripply.eu and now Bithomp. Free, simple and easy.

Disclaimer: This post features downloading, installing and using a desktop wallet. This wallet is as is and XRPChat accepts no responsibility for any damages and/ or losses incurred etc.

 Difficulty level: HARD

As requested by several members of the XRPChat forum this guide will cover setting up and the first few steps in using a desktop wallet.

What is a Desktop Wallet?

A desktop wallet stores all its information on a local machine (ie. your computer). It may transact trades online, but key elements remain with the user.

Which Wallet to Use

XRPChat’s Links & Resources tab features several desktop wallet versions, many of which are enhanced or direct copies of Ripple’s depreciated RippleTrade wallet. What wallet you choose to use depends on your technical comfort level and feature use requirements.

Originally this guide was to feature the Rippex Desktop wallet, however, that particular wallet already features extensive steps, tutorials and videos to guide new users. These steps can be found here or by selecting the image to the right.

As per the Beginner Guide mission statement we will avoid duplicating efforts already taken by others and instead focus on another wallet, the XRPChat wallet.

Obtaining the XRPChat wallet

The XRPChat wallet is hosted on GitHub, a trusted repository for source code.

• Visit the Links & Resources tab on the XRPChat forum
• Click on Xrp Chat Wallet under Desktop Wallets. This will bring you to the GitHub page. It can also be directly accessed via https://github.com/karl-os/XRP-CHAT-WALLET/releases
• Select your current operating system. For the remainder of this guide we will be using Windows (7/10).

Note: the md5: b94d23f3800ec996716d2f4fb4783ca3 code is a security feature. This is a hash to prove authorship. In this case they should match the codes found here to prove that XRPChat is the one who published the code on GitHub.

• After selected a zip file will be downloaded (below image, 1)
• Extract and open (below image, 2 and 3)
• Install the ‘RippleAdminConsole-1.4.0-rc3’ application (below image, 4)

 

• After installation you will be presented with a terms or service/ disclaimer page. Accept after reading
• You will now be presented with the application home screen

Note: This guide assumes you are creating a new wallet and not importing an existing one. Importing, or using some of the other options found on the welcome screen are for more advanced users and should be ignored for new beginners.

• Select Create new account
• Select Create an empty account, choose the destination you want the wallet file to be saved in and select save.
• Enter a new password and select Encrypt account
• The next screen shows the information entered so far.

Your passphrase is your password to access your account.

Your Ripple Address is the public key that can be shared or monitored on the ripple network. You can have funds sent to this wallet via this address from any other ripple wallet.

Your secret key.  Important! A secret key will look like this: sJR7Kolm8pJ7kpB4CbdjsuydwVMpTKPpj. Secret Keys will always start with “s”. This is how you prove ownership over a wallet and gives withdraw rights. DO NOT SHARE

• After confirming that secret key is written down you will be presented with a notice that the wallet is not activated yet. This wallet will need at least 20 XRP sent to it be activated and to establish a trust line. See here on steps on obtaining your first XRP.

Once activated you can see the wallet Overview where it will show all current XRP assets as well as any gateway IOUs you may have

Send tab brings up the direct send option. You can enter another ripple address and if required a destination tag (mostly limited to exchanges and/ or gateways) to send assets directly.

The Trade tab is where you can place ask/ bid orders and see current markets.

You will need to select Advanced (1) to enter the first gateway and currency pair (2). Please confirm with a specific gateway for their ripple address to ensure you have the correct address.

 

 

 

Note: Normally there is a 5 XRP cost to each trustline (connected gateways), however there is a special rule in Ripple for new accounts, where you can create your first 2- trustlines even if the account has less than 30 XRP. In other words, when your account is activated with 20 XRP, you already can connect to two gateways and start deposit with fiats/cryptos. *

Once entered the current bid, ask and spread information will be shown. Further down the page you have the option to enter your own bid and/or ask price and see the current order books.

With that you should have a the basics needed to operate your desktop wallet.

 

* thanks to @ripplerm for explaining this further.

 

 

 

[Dominic]

Can we get this app for android ? For myself Tablets are more convenient but they are on android. Any thoughts ?

[footballguy]

I just withdrew XRP from Kraken using this wallet, but it is still offline even though Kraken is saying the withdrawal went through. Does it take a certain amount of time to show up once you send the XRP?