How do you configure geth to use coinbase?

Question

I'm a novice. I'm looking for instructions on how to configure geth so it sends my mined eth to coinbase.

In my head, I think the process is:

1. Sync the blockchain geth --datadir /data/ethData --autodag --verbosity 1
2. wait for it to finish. Get an ETH address from https://www.coinbase.com/addresses geth --etherbase '0xa4d8e9cae4d04b093aac82e6cd355b6b963fb7ff' --mine
3. Profit!

Is that correct?

Answer 1

here's what I do on my private Ethereum Testnets (you don't need to create your own network though):

1. Starting the geth node and entering the JS Console

   geth --networkid XXXX console
   

2. Creating an account. You'll be asked to provide a passphrase.

   personal.newAccount()
   

3. Defining your initial/primary account as coinbase:

   miner.setEtherbase(eth.accounts[0])
   

4. Verify coinbase:

   eth.coinbase
   

After that's done you can either exit the JS Console or start the mining process by:

miner.start()

In case DAG wasn't created, it should automatically be created.

I hope this helps and answers your question!

Cheers

Answer 2

Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct. But...

...I think you're conflating two ideas here.

coinbase.com is a trading/exchange site, which relatively recently added ETH to the currencies it sells.

A coinbase account - which Ethereum also calls the etherbase - is by default the primary local account. This can, however, be set to any address you wish - it doesn't have to be an account you created on your local machine.

References:

• What is Coinbase?
• https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Mining
• https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Managing-your-accounts

Answer 3

If you want a constant coinbase among all nodes, you can simply set the etherbase manually as follows:

miner.setEtherbase('0xa4d8e9cae4d04b093aac82e6cd355b6b963fb7ff');

AFAIK, you don't even need to have a keystore file, i.e. the specified account does not need to be in eth.accounts, but I'm not sure about this.

Answer 4

Yes, that's correct. Etherbase is the "target" account for where to put the reward from mining.

It's a miner setting:

MINER OPTIONS:
  --mine                    Enable mining
  --minerthreads value      Number of CPU threads to use for mining (default: 8)
  --etherbase value         Public address for block mining rewards (default = first account created) (default: "0")
  --targetgaslimit value    Target gas limit sets the artificial target gas floor for the blocks to mine (default: 4712388)
  --gasprice "18000000000"  Minimal gas price to accept for mining a transactions
  --extradata value         Block extra data set by the miner (default = client version)

You can specify it when running Geth like this:

geth --mine --etherbase 0xa4d8e9cae4d04b093aac82e6cd355b6b963fb7ff --gasprice "1000000000"

gasprice is the minimum price for executing transactions. It's a function of the load on the network.