How to make a new wallet in Sia-UI

Learn how to make a new wallet in Sia-UI. This set of instructions assumes that you are setting up a new wallet in Sia-UI for the first time. If you need to restore an existing wallet, learn how here.

Things You'll Need

A desktop or notebook computer with Sia-UI installed. Don't have Sia-UI yet?

A secure physical and digital way to safely store a long string of words.

Create a new wallet

When you first boot up Sia-UI, you'll be prompted to create a Siacoin wallet. A wallet lets you store Siacoins and is required to be able to upload files to the decentralized network, or rent out your storage space and earn more Siacoins.

After starting Sia, you'll see this screen. Click Create new wallet.

Next, you'll see your seed. Your seed is a string of (usually 29) words and is your key to your Siacoin wallet. It's also how you can recover your funds - or in the future, your files - from another computer.

You need to keep your seed safe. Safe means a lot of things to different people – but because your entire Siacoin balance is controlled by your seed, keep both digital and physical copies. Everyone does different things, and everyone has a different risk tolerance. Knowing this, our recommendations are as follows.

Digitally: Use a password or biometric (e.g. fingerprint) secured app like 1Password or LastPass.

Physically: Keep a laminated paper copy stored in a locked safe.

Loss: If you lose your seed, your Siacoin balance will be unrecoverable. Theft: If someone steals your seed, they can easily steal your Siacoin balance.

Ready for a deep dive? Learn more about the importance of your seed.

Once you've stored your seed, click Next.

You'll then be asked to verify your seed. Sia-UI will ask you for a random selection of your 29 words to make sure you've copied them down correctly. Enter them in the appropriate blank spaces. You'll see each box outlined in green when you've entered them correctly, and you can go back to the previous screen if you need to double check. Click Done.

You might be asked to wait a moment while Sia-UI works.

When Sia-UI is ready, you'll be taken the Dashboard. The Dashboard shows you a snapshot of the Sia network, including your current block height, the number of peers you're connected to, and the number of active hosts on the network.

These numbers will increase over time. Once you're caught up, block height grows by one every 10 minutes or so, active hosts will increase as more people lend their storage space to Sia, and active peers should stabilize around 7 or 8.

When your block height is fully synced, you'll see Synced in the upper right corner. Hover over for more info.

Your wallet is ready! Go to the Wallet tab to check it out.

Your wallet shows you how many Siacoins you currently have, as well as three views: Transactions, Send, and Receive.

Learn about your Siacoin wallet.