Manage FIL
This guide will show you how to create and manage a Lotus wallet and how to use it to send some Filecoin to a different address. Each node can have multiple addresses.
To receive and send FIL with Lotus, you will need to have a Lotus node installed and running.
About Wallet Addresses
When using a wallet, an account is identified by its address. A Filecoin address always starts with the letter f (t for testnets) and a digit that indicates what type of address it is.
Filecoin accounts have two kinds of address, longer public key addresses, and shorter ID addresses. Both addresses refer to the same account and can be used to send and receive FIL using a wallet.
Public Key Address
A public key address is derived directly from a cryptographic key. Public key addresses start with the characters f1 (secp256k1) or f3 (BLS), depending on the type of encryption key used.
Here’s an example of a secp256k1 public key address: f1abjxfbp274xpdqcpuaykwkfb43omjotacm2p3za.
Public key addresses are the most common way to refer to Filecoin accounts, and they are supported by hardware wallets like Ledger.
Because a public key address does not depend on any blockchain state, they are considered robust and are recommended for most use cases involving transfers of FIL, for example, when sending FIL to another user through an exchange.
ID Address
ID addresses are a compact and more “human friendly” way to refer to an account than public key addresses. ID addresses always start with the characters f0 (or t0 for testnets), followed by a sequence of digits, for example: f033259.
Every ID address for a Filecoin account has an alternative public key address that corresponds to the same account. You can find the ID address for any public key address by searching for the public key address on FilFox, a Filecoin block explorer.
Because they are more compact than public key addresses, ID addresses are often used when refering to storage providers and other long-lived Filecoin Actors. As these actors receive a large volume of messages, the compact address can result in meaningful savings in gas fees. A multisig wallet is a type of Actor.
While you can send FIL to an ID address using a wallet, you should first check the details for the account on FilFox to see when the account was created, as well as the corresponding public key address. If the address was created very recently (within the finality period) there is a small chance that it could be re-assigned as the network reaches consensus, and the public key address should be used instead.
More information about addresses can be found in the How Filecoin works section.
Creating a wallet
Creating wallets using Lotus is very simple. There are mutliple wallet types to choose from.
~/.lotus/keystore (or $LOTUS_PATH/keystore). Removing these folders will also remove the keys, and you will lose control of any funds in those wallets. We recommend backing up your wallets as soon as they have been created or using a
hardware wallet.Create a BLS wallet
lotus wallet new bls
f3ryb26aqsxkq6cj6bs5inp5ssxkkw24l3st2uojcc5kh3vhtdqjt67zdhougqwrsvm4baagm7bclhmxs5crbq
Create a secp256k1 wallet
lotus wallet new
f1x37y5ekmq2yq5phcine3jvtrqgaxsjrdhpvmksa
Create a multisig wallet
A multi-signature (multisig) wallet refers to a wallet that requires multiple keys to authorize a FIL transactions.
lotus msig create address1 address2..
sent create in message: bafy2bzaceagbn6eb643pirmqvuvy23pbhi6reh3yr6wtlqr2ywetomlo2giku
waiting for confirmation..
Created new multisig: t01004 t2ff7ch2h7qr6f4q5lmvq3ajo6lxucei46attp3ai
If you want to read more about multisignature wallets and how they function, you can go to the multisig page
Listing addresses
You can create as many addresses as you need. One of them will be the default address.
You can see a list of all addresses for your current node:
lotus wallet list
Address Balance Nonce Default
f1x37y5ekmq2yq5phcine3jvtrqgaxsjrdhpvmksa 100 FIL 1
f3ryb26aqsxkq6cj6bs5inp5ssxkkw24l3st2uojcc5kh3vhtdqjt67zdhougqwrsvm4baagm7bclhmxs5crbq 10 FIL 4 X
You can see that your default address is marked with an X in the lotus wallet list output. You can also check it with:
lotus wallet default
f3ryb26aqsxkq6cj6bs5inp5ssxkkw24l3st2uojcc5kh3vhtdqjt67zdhougqwrsvm4baagm7bclhmxs5crbq
If you wish, you can change the default address to a different one with the set-default command:
lotus wallet set-default <address>
Default address set to: t1ehwusalfn3wrng3zis4rhybdexgrtgsj6vp7fly
Obtaining FIL
For non-mainnet networks, FIL can be obtained from a faucet. The faucet for the calibration network can be found here. For mainnet, the easiest is to buy FIL from an exchange. Not all exchanges support FIL, so do your research before signing up.
Once you have received some FIL, use wallet balance to check your balance:
lotus wallet balance <address>
100 FIL
Sending FIL
Use the send command followed by the receiving address and the amount of FIL you want to send
# lotus send <target address> <FIL amount>
lotus send f1zp2... 3
bafy1...
Lotus will output a transaction hash after a successful transaction. You can view details of this transaction using a Filecoin explorer.
Lotus assumes you want to send FIL from the default address. To send FIL from a specific address, use --from followed by the address you want to send FIL from. This address must have been created or imported to your Lotus node.
# lotus send --from=<sender address> <target address> <FIL amount>
lotus send --from f1zp2... f15zt... 3.141
bafy2...
For more advanced sending options you can always check out the command line helptext by adding --help or -h after the command:
lotus send --help
NAME:
lotus send - Send funds between accounts
USAGE:
lotus send [command options] [targetAddress] [amount]
CATEGORY:
BASIC
OPTIONS:
--force Deprecated: use global 'force-send' (default: false)
--from value optionally specify the account to send funds from
--gas-feecap value specify gas fee cap to use in AttoFIL (default: "0")
--gas-limit value specify gas limit (default: 0)
--gas-premium value specify gas price to use in AttoFIL (default: "0")
--method value specify method to invoke (default: 0)
--nonce value specify the nonce to use (default: 0)
--params-hex value specify invocation parameters in hex
--params-json value specify invocation parameters in json
Specify Invocation Parameters
If you want specify invocation parameters using lotus send, you can use the following code-snippet to get the encoded parameters
lotus chain encode params --encoding=hex <toAddr> <method id> <params>
Mapped method <> method id can be found in the Filecoin GitHub repository.
Then to send it, run:
lotus send --params-hex=<encoded output from the previous step>
Transaction fees
Every transaction that sends FIL pays an additional fee based on its gas usage. Gas and fees are explained in the How Filecoin Works guide. By default, Lotus automatically sets all the necessary values. However, you may want to use the --gas-feecap flag in the send command to avoid surprises when network congestion is high. For more information about messages and fees, see the Message Pool guide and Gas fees sections.
Exporting and importing addresses
You can export a wallet from a Lotus node, and re-import it to a different Lotus node. Use wallet export to export an address from a node:
lotus wallet export <address> > <address>.key
Use wallet import to import an address into a node:
lotus wallet import /path/to/<address>.key
imported key t1x37y5ekmq2yq5phcine3jvtrqgaxsjrdhpvmksa successfully!
Offline nodes
If your Lotus nodes is offline and not synced, you can still import the addresses to another Lotus node. Each Lotus node stores its wallet in ~/.lotus/keystore:
~/.lotus/keystore/
├── MF2XI2...
├── MRSWMYLVNR...
├── NRUWE4BSOA...
├── O5QWY3DFOQWWMM3RNZSXI6TKOJYHQYTMMQZHQNDBNRY...
└── O5QWY3DFOQWWMM3VOBZHAZLCOIZGINLDMRZWWNLMNJS...
The filename for the keys are base32 encoded, so you can find which address is which by decoding the string.
To export a wallet when a node is offline, copy these files from ~/.lotus/keystore to another location. To import this wallet, copy these files into ~/.lotus/keystore. The Lotus node will automatically use these keys when it next starts.
Deleting addresses
delete command, marking the address as unusable, without erasing the data itself from the database. You will have to manually go into ~/.lotus/keystore and actually deleting the address itself for permanent removal.You can delete an address in your wallet with the lotus wallet delete command.
lotus wallet delete <address>
Soft deleting address: t1ceuikq3zsznu5tghv3ft7j6mmtdygqx7sjpezlq
Hard deletion of the address in `~/.lotus/keystore` is needed for permanent removal
delete command, marking the address as unusable, without erasing the data itself from the database. You will have to manually go into ~/.lotus/keystore and actually deleting the address itself for permanent removal.