Ethereum is a decentralized ‘world computer’ that lives on the Internet and allows secure execution of programs called ‘smart contracts’ on the Ethereum blockchain. In order to deploy programs to the blockchain, you need Ether to pay for the resources you’re consuming. You can generate Ether by ‘mining’, which is the process of participating in and securing the decentralized Ethereum network. Once you have Ether, you can send it to other users using their Ethereum address, or use it to pay for running programs on the Ethereum blockchain.

This guide will teach you how to set up a private testing blockchain, and how to mine your first Ether. The getting started guide on the Ethereum website didn’t explain a few crucial points, such as how to get the genesis.json file. This is a quick guide to rectify that. See here for a more detailed explanation of what Ethereum is and why it’s awesome.

1) Install the Ethereum Go client, Geth

From the terminal:

bash <(curl https://install-geth.ethereum.org -L)

2) cd to a new blank directory

mkdir ~/ethereum_test && cd ~/ethereum_test

3) Create an empty directory for the test blockchain

This is so our testnet doesn’t clobber the main Ethereum blockchain

mkdir .testchain

4) Create a test genesis.json file

{
	"nonce": "0xcafebabecafebabe",
	"timestamp": "0x0",
	"parentHash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
	"extraData": "0x0",
	"gasLimit": "0x8000000",
	"difficulty": "0x800",
	"mixhash": "0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000",
	"coinbase": "0x3333333333333333333333333333333333333333",
	"alloc": {
	}
}

The difficulty is set very low so that we can mine quickly.

5) Run a private test net

geth --genesis genesis.json --datadir .testchain --networkid 9876 --nodiscover --maxpeers 0 console

You can set the network id to whatever you want. Only clients on the same network id are allowed to connect to each other, so if you put in a unique network id, this creates a private testnet. --nodiscover and --maxpeers 0 make it so that no one can discover you on your test network if they happen to have the same id, and so that you won’t connect to anyone else either.

6) Create an account from the Geth console

personal.newAccount("password")

7) Check that your account was created

eth.accounts[0] will print your account address, and is your default account.

8) Mine some blocks for that sweet Ether

miner.start(10)

9) Stop your miner

miner.stop()

10) Check your balance from the Geth console

var account = eth.accounts[0]
eth.getBalance(account)

Now that you have Ether, you can follow the example on the ethereum website to set up a greeter contract