Setup

Before you begin storing any data on the Filecoin network, you need to run through a few steps to get everything set up. This section covers getting access to a Lotus full-node, creating a Lotus lite-node on your computer, getting a FIL address, and signing up to Filecoin+.

What is Lotus? Programs that interact with the Filecoin network are called implementations, and Lotus is a command-line interface (CLI) implementation. There are other implementation being created alongside Lotus, however Lotus is the only Filecoin implementation created and maintained by Protocol Labs.

Things to note

As you’re going through this section, make a note of the following variables:

Variable	Description	Example
Your Filecoin address	The public part of your Filecoin address. This address is what other users can use to send your FIL.	`f1fwavjcfb32nxbczmh3kgdxhbffqjfsfby2otloi`

Access a full-node

A Lotus full-node is a computer running the lotus daemon. Full-nodes are unique because they have complete access to the Filecoin blockchain. The computer specifications required to run a Lotus full-node are relatively high and might be out of reach for most end-user laptops and PCs.

Usually, we’d have to spin up a full-node, but we’re going to use a Lotus full-node provided by Protocol Labs for this tutorial. This node, called api.chain.love, is only for practice sessions like this tutorial and should not be relied upon for any production or development purposes.

Install a lite-node

A lite-node lets your computer interact with the Filecoin network without having to run a resource-intensive full-node! Lite-nodes can do things like sign messages and talk to storage providers, but any processes that need data from the blockchain must come from a full-node. Luckily, lite-nodes automatically route any blockchain-based requests to a full-node. For this tutorial, you’re going to run a Lotus lite-node on your local computer and have it connect to a full-node managed by Protocol Labs.

A diagram showing how Lotus lite-nodes interact with Lotus full-nodes.

macOS

Requirements You can install Lotus on MacOS 10.11 El Capitan or higher. You must have Homebrew installed.

Install Lotus from the filecoin-project tap

brew install filecoin-project/lotus/lotus

Lotus is now installed on your computer.

Head onto the next section to run your Lotus lite-node ↓

MacOS Build from source

If Homebrew doesn’t work for you, or if you prefer to build from source, try these steps.

Check that the XCode command line tools are installed.

xcode-select -p (if missing, run xcode-select --install )

Install the pre-requisites via Homebrew

brew install go  jq pkg-config rustup hwloc

Clone the latest sources

git clone https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus.git

Switch into the lotus folder
```
cd lotus/
```
Checkout the latest release
```
git checkout releases
```

Setup some environment variables correctly

export LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/homebrew/lib; export FFI_BUILD_FROM_SOURCE=1

Install Rust (when prompted, choose the default ‘install’ option)
```
rustup-init
```
Build the clients
```
make all
```
If you get a warning: ‘kIOMasterPortDefault’ is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 12.0’ , don’t worry - the build still worked.
Finally, install the client into your system
```
sudo make install
```

Now, you’re ready to run a Lotus lite node

Linux

Install Lotus dependencies:

Arch:

sudo pacman -Syu hwloc

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install -y hwloc

Fedora:

sudo dnf -y install hwloc

OpenSUSE:

sudo zypper in hwloc

Amazon Linux 2:

sudo yum install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm; sudo yum install -y hwloc-devel

Download the latest Linux bundle from the Lotus GitHub releases page:

wget https://github.com/filecoin-project/lotus/releases/download/v1.19.0/lotus_1.19.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz

Extract tar -xvf archive.tar.gz executable:
```
tar -xvf lotus_1.19.0_linux_amd64.tar.gz
```

Move the lotus binary to /usr/local/bin:

sudo mv lotus_1.19.0_linux_amd64/lotus /usr/local/bin/lotus

Head onto the next section to run your Lotus lite-node ↓

Run a Lotus lite-node

Now that you have Lotus ready to run, you can start a Lotus lite-node on your computer and connect to the api.chain.love Lotus full-node!

api.chain.love is a Lotus full-node managed by Protocol Labs. It’s ideal for use in this tutorial, but should not be used in a development or in a production environment.

Open a terminal windows and run the lotus daemon --lite command, using api.chain.love as the full-node address:

FULLNODE_API_INFO=wss://api.chain.love lotus daemon --lite

...
2021-06-16T02:00:08.390Z        INFO    markets loggers/loggers.go:56   module ready   {"module": "storage client"}
2021-06-16T02:00:08.392Z        INFO    markets loggers/loggers.go:56   module ready   {"module": "retrieval client"}
2021-06-16T02:00:18.190Z        INFO    basichost       basic/natmgr.go:91      DiscoverNAT error:no NAT found
...

MacOS users may see a warning regarding Lotus. Select Accept incoming connections if you see a warning.
The Lotus daemon will continue to run. You must run further commands from a separate terminal window.

Next up is getting a FIL address ↓

Get a FIL address

Filecoin addresses are similar to regular bank account numbers. Other users can use your address to send you FIL, and you can use your address to pay storage providers for storing and retrieving your data.

There are two parts to a Filecoin address: the public address and the private key. You can freely share your public address with anyone, but you should never share your private key. We’re not going to view any private keys in this tutorial, but it’s essential to understand the difference between your public address and your private key.

Open a new terminal window and create an address using the lotus wallet new command:
```
lotus wallet new
```
```
f1fwavjcfb32nxbczmh3kgdxhbffqjfsfby2otloi
```
Lotus outputs your public address. Public addresses always start with f1.
Make a note of this address. We’ll use it in an upcoming section.

Backup your address

Your address is made up of two parts: your public address and your private key. The public address is what you see when you run lotus wallet new, and you’re safe to share that address with whoever you want. Your private key, however, must be kept secret and secure. If you lose your private key, you lose access to any FIL stored in that address.

It is incredibly important that you backup your addreses. Storing a copy of your addresses on another device is a great way to ensure you don’t lose access to your funds.

If your public address f1... is still in the terminal window, copy it to your clipboard. If not, list the addresses associated with your Lotus node and copy your public address:
```
lotus wallet list
```
```
Address                                    Balance  Nonce  Default
f1nau67e6k6ggdwluatfz4waexetjfrqmx6fil3nq  0 FIL    0      X
```
Use lotus wallet export to export your private key, replacing f1... with your public key:
```
lotus wallet export f1... > my_address.key
```
This will create a new file called my_address.key in the current directory.

Once you have your address in a file, you can copy it to another drive, securely send it to another computer, or even print it out. It’s important to keep this file safe. If anything happens to your Lotus node, you can still access your funds using this file.

Adding FIL to your wallet or using Filecoin Plus?

Before you can transact on the network, you usually have to add some Filecoin to your wallet. You can do this via an exchange such as Coinbase, but you can bypass this stage by applying for Filecoin Plus Datacap below. If you have Datacap on your wallet, then transaction fees are covered, and you can start doing deals faster.

Filecoin Plus

Storage providers get paid either by receiving FIL directly from users for storing their data, winning block rewards from the network, or both!

Getting paid from users is straightforward. If Laika wants to store some data, and Albert is a storage provider, the two of them can create a deal to store Laika’s data for X amount of time for Y FIL.

Block rewards are randomly given to a storage provider every 30 seconds. The more data that a storage provider is storing, the higher their chances of winning the block reward. So if a storage provider accepts a deal from a user to store 5 GB of data, they have 5 chances to win the block reward for each 30 second round.

DataCap acts as a kind of multiplier for block rewards. If a storage provider accepts a deal from a user with DataCap attached, also known as a verified deal , then the Filecoin network treats that deal as though it’s 10x bigger. So a 5 GB deal gives the storage provider 50 chances to win the block reward instead of the usual 5 chances. Some storage providers find DataCap so valuable that they’re willing to make verified deals without charging any FIL! You can find a list of these storage providers using the Filecoin Plus storage provider registry.

Signing up to Filecoin Plus is easy and free!

You need a GitHub account that is at least 180 days old. If you don’t have a GitHub account that’s old enough, get in touch with #fil-lotus-help on Filecoin Slack.

Go to plus.fil.org.
Under For Clients, click Proceed.
Under Get Verified, click Get Datacap.
Click Automatic Verification.
Click Github to connect to your Github account
In the Request field, enter the public address you got from running lotus wallet list. This step may take a few minutes to complete.

You can check your Filecoin Plus balance with

lotus filplus check-client-datacap f1...

You can only request automatic datacap once every 30 days for a single GitHub account.

Next steps

Now that we’ve got all the set up out of the way, we can move onto storing data with the Filecoin network →

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Setup

Things to note #

Access a full-node #

Install a lite-node #

macOS #

MacOS Build from source #

Linux #

Run a Lotus lite-node #

Get a FIL address #

Backup your address #

Adding FIL to your wallet or using Filecoin Plus? #

Filecoin Plus #

Sign up #

Next steps #