Introduction

The Spectrecoin Foundation CIC released the production version of Spectrecoin v4.x on 9th September 2019 on our GitHub repo. This release will activate a planned hard-fork on Friday 27/09/2019 (27th September 2019) @ 2000 hours (GMT) (1569614400 unix epoch time) and this is a MANDATORY upgrade and you will need to get the v4.x wallet up and running ahead of the hard-fork to be able to continue staking. Spectrecoin v4 will generate a one-time 3,000,000 XSPEC staking reward for The Spectrecoin Foundation CIC at address SSGCEMb6xESgmuGXkx7yozGDxhVSXzBP3a to cover increasing development costs. This has been covered in detail in the September 2019 newsletter. Please follow the below guide if you are unsure about what to do and what to expect.

v4.x Upgrade FAQs Sep 19 Newsletter

BACKUP wallet.dat

Before you start this upgrade process, It is vitally important that you backup your ‘wallet.dat‘ file / private keys. This file (wallet.dat) holds your coins and in case of some upgrade failure or other incident you will be able to recover your coins. We have provided a step-by-step backup guide below for the different platforms. If you are confident about what you are doing you can just skip to the ‘Download’ or ‘Bootstrap’ sections.

Go to ‘Download‘ section

If you are not confident about creating copies / backups of files and in general feel uneasy about this aspects of things, I strongly recommend that you familiarise yourself with basic file operations before upgrading.

Personally I would recommend a backup strategy for all crypto wallets with at least 2 local copies and at least one ‘off-site‘ copy. That way you are covered in most circumstances. If you have 3 or more copies of the ‘wallet.dat‘ file it’s highly unlikely that they will all fail at the same time. Obviously, when I say 2 local copies I mean on two physically different media in your house, your working copy of ‘wallet.dat‘ is held in your main computer and you have two other copies on an external hard drive, USB stick or something similar. It’s no good having a backup on the same machine if it fails. Always ENCRYPT your wallet.dat file with a strong password!!

Go to Mac OSX – Backup Go to Pi / Linux – Backup

Windows 10 (backup)

In Windows 10 the Spectrecoin data directory is at the following path:

C:\Users\YOUR-USERNAME\AppData\Roaming

Type %appdata% into the search box, to bring up the below window Click on the link as shown to open a ‘File Explorer’ window of your %AppData% folder Open the ‘Roaming’ folder and you will see all the app directories Find the ‘SpectreCoin’ directory that contains all the data Go to ‘Download‘ section

Mac OSX (backup)

On Mac OSX the Spectrecoin data directory is at the following path:

~/Users/YOUR-USERNAME/Library/Application Support/SpectreCoin

As the OSX ‘Finder‘ app will hide the ‘~/Library‘ and the ‘/Application Support‘ folder by default, you can either reveal the hidden folders once using the key combination Cmd (⌘) + Shift (⇧) + . (dot) from within a finder window and navigate to the data folder or you can show hidden filed permanently. Please see the link below if you are not used to dealing with Mac hidden files.

https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/hidden-files-mac-3520878/

In the ‘Finder‘ app open the ‘Macintosh HD‘ folder Then open the ‘Users‘ folder and open the folder with your username, which is your home folder You will see your username on top and you know you’re in your ‘home folder‘

Then show hidden files: Cmd (⌘) + Shift (⇧) + . (dot) Then find the ‘greyed out‘ ‘Library‘ folder and open it Then find and open the ‘SpectreCoin‘ folder and make a backup of the whole folder

You can also use third party tools for Mac, like the excellent Path Finder file explorer that makes it really easy to manage files in tabs. (https://cocoatech.com/#/)

Go to ‘Download‘ section

Raspberry Pi / Linux (backup)

On Raspberry Pi and on Linux the Spectrecoin data directory is at the following path:

Raspberry Pi: '/home/pi/.spectrecoin'

Linux: '/root/.spectrecoin'

DOWNLOAD THE BINARIES

After you are 100% confident that you have a complete backup, you should download the v4.x binaries for your operating system following the links from our website:

https://spectreproject.io/index.html#downloads

Once you have downloaded the binaries for your operating system, either overwrite the old version of the Spectrecoin binaries or delete the old binaries and copy the new ones to the app directory. Make sure you close your wallet software before you delete or overwrite with the new binaries.

Once you have installed the new binaries, start your wallet again.

When you start the Raspberry Pi version of Spectrecoin after updating you will see the ‘debug.log‘ file updating. As there is currently no ‘blue tick’ in the Raspberry Pi version to indicate a full sync status, you will need to wait until the ‘height=‘ which is the block number (shown in red) is equal to the last block shown in the block explorer (shown in red below).

Raspberry Pi ‘debug.log‘ after successful upgrade Block Explorer

Please see the WIKI and also the below link for updating the Raspberry Pi UI.

https://github.com/spectrecoin/documentation/wiki/UpdatePre3.xRaspbian

FAQs

What is a ‘MANDATORY‘ upgrade?

On the 27th September 2019 new consensus rules will get activated on the Spectrecoin blockchain. This is part of the v4.x release. If you do not upgrade your wallet you will no longer be part of the Spectrecoin network and blockchain and any stake reward you get will be on an alternative unsupported chain with the old consensus rules. That also means that you will not be able to either deposit or withdraw Spectrecoin from any exchanges.

What are the ‘binaries‘?

Strictly speaking a ‘binary‘ file is a non-text file, but in the context of Spectrecoin the ‘binaries‘ we are talking about are the executable files, i.e. the compiled, ready to run wallet software, such as the ‘spectrecoin.exe‘ (Windows) or the ‘Spectrecoin‘ executable for OSX / Linux.



Can I trust the ‘binaries‘ you provide?

All of the official releases comes with a sha256 checksum published with the release. That means you can check that the file you download is the same as the one we publish on GitHub and that the file has not been modified somehow, i.e. you can check that the file really is from the official Spectrecoin GitHub. You will find information on that under the release.

What if I missed this announcement and keep staking like usual?

If you keep staking past 27/09/2019 using a V3.x wallet, it is likely that the blockchain you are on will stall and you will not receive any stakes. The seed nodes run by The Spectrecoin Foundation will all be running v4.x so you may not be able to sync your wallet. If you should receive any stakes, they are not valid on the v4.x chain and you will not be able to deposit or withdraw from any exchanges. There is no reason whatsoever for not updating to v4.x.

Any more questions? please ask the team in our Discord

Back to ‘Introduction‘ Go to ‘Download‘ section

LINKS