Here you will find information about how you can create a cold staking VPS (virtual private machine) for the Ghost network. This will allow you to stake your coins continuously to maximize earnings from staking rewards.
VPS Provider & Setup
For this guide we will be using Vultr.com for the VPS (virtual private server) provider. You are welcome to use whatever you prefer but the guide may slightly deviate in that case.
- Create an account on https://www.vultr.com/
- Once logged in you should see “Products” sidebar item, click it.
3. Now you should be on the VPS listing page. Click the “+” button, on the top right, to create a new VPS that will be used to cold stake your Ghost.
4. This will take you to a new page to set the parameters for the VPS.
5. The top “Choose Server” selection should be selected as “Cloud Compute”
6. Next, you will select the region for the VPS, “Server Location”. Select whatever location you prefer to have your VPS running, this doesn’t affect anything major.
7. Now to select the “Server Type”, this is important. Make sure the “64 bit OS” is selected in the top tab selection:
8. For the section below make sure to select the “Ubuntu” box, shown in the image:
9. A small dropdown box will appear and select “20.04 x64”.
10. The next section is to select the “Server Size”. Minimum requirement is the $5/month sever:
11. You can skip the “Additional Features”, “Startup Script”, and “SSH Keys” sections.
12. Go to the bottom where it has “Server Hostname & Label”. For this enter “ghost-coldstaking-node”:
13. Now you can click “Deploy Now”, blue button, at the bottom right of screen.
14. It will now take you back to the VPS list view page. Give the server about 2–3 minutes to be created. It will show “Installing” under the status column, wait for this to finish:
15. Once it is done the status text will change to “Running” and the color will be green.
16. Click on the title of the server on the list to load it’s page up, “ghost-coldstaking-node”.
17. Leave this page open and we will come back to it in a moment.
Connecting to your VPS
The next part of this guide we will be connecting to the VPS we created in the previous section. This will vary slightly if you are on Windows, Mac, or Linux machine.
Windows Users Only (PUTTY)
(Mac Users Guide is further down the page)
- For windows you will need to download an application called PUTTY if you do not already have it.
- You can find the download link to the application here, https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html
- Find the download link under “Alternative binary files”:
Select either the 32-bit or 64-bit version depending on your system (most users will be 64-bit)
4. Save or Run the exe once it downloads and you will see the PuTTY Configuration screen.
5. Now we need to find the IP Address of our VPS server from Vultr. You can find the IP Address of your server from Vultr.com website as shown, which you simply click the copy button (red arrow pointing to it)
6. Now place your server IP in the Host Name box
7. Click “Open”
8. A popup will appear like this, click “Yes”
9. Now you should see a black screen that says “login as:”.
10. Type “root” (without the quotes) and press enter
11. It will now ask for a password. We can find this on the Vultr website,simply click the copy button (red arrow pointing to it) to copy the password.
12. Now in PuTTY to PASTE your password in all you have to do is RIGHT CLICK ONCE. Your password will not show on the screen and it will look like nothing was entered or happened, this is normal, your password text does not appear. Press enter and you should see text that looks similar to this and you are logged in
13. Now proceed to the next section, “Installing ‘Ghostman’ on Your VPS for Coldstaking”
Mac / Linux Users Only (Terminal)
Mac and Linux machines already have command line interfaces built in. For mac, press Command+Space which will show the search window, then type in “terminal” and open the Terminal app.
- To log into your VPS you will need to use this command:
ssh root@IP_ADDRESS - In the place of the IP_ADDRESS you will fill this information with the IP Address of your VPS machine from Vultr.com.
- The IP Address will be shown here, just click the copy icon (red arrow is pointing at)
5. So in this case the command I need to type in will look like this…
ssh root@45.32.5.128
6. Next it may or may not ask you to type either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, “Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? “ -> type yes
7. At this point it will be asking you for the password. This is listed on the VPS machine from Vultr.com.
The same as before we will just click the copy button (red arrow is pointing to)
8. Now your password will be copied to your clipboard.
9. We go back to Terminal, right click inside this window somewhere to bring up the menu. Click “paste”, to paste in your copied password:
10. Whenever you click paste, TEXT WILL NOT APPEAR (your password will not show up), but your password will be pasted in even though it doesn’t show anything. Now all you have to do is press enter and you will be connected to your VPS via command line.
11. Now proceed to the next section, “Installing ‘Ghostman’ on Your VPS for Coldstaking”
Installing “Ghostman” on Your VPS for Cold Staking
Now we will continue the guide and set up a Ghost node via your VPS that will be able to cold stake your coins without you having to keep your wallet open all the time.
- To begin from here you must make sure you are logged into your VPS. You command line window should similar to this:
If this is not what you see then you are not logged into your VPS and please go back to the previous section “Connecting to your VPS”.
2. Now once you verify you are on the VPS you need to paste in another command:
cd ~ && git clone https://github.com/ghost-coin/ghostman && cd ghostman && bash quicksetup.shThis will download the Ghost installer, “ghostman”, that will automate the install process on the VPS for you. To copy and paste, is similar to how we have done with the password. Right click the window, and “Paste” for Terminal or simply right click for PUTTY, then press Enter.
3. This will begin to install ghostman and dependencies. There will be an initial prompt asking you to type Y/n. Enter “Y”
4. Again there will be another prompt asking for y/n. Enter “y”
5. Same as before another prompt asking y/n. Enter “y”
6. Now the install process should continue and you will be shown your mnemonic phrase (in purple). Write this phrase down / securely save it to a text file and do not share it with anyone (I am sharing with you because I trust you won’t hack me)
(NOTE: DO NOT press CTRL + C or Command + C to copy, this will exit the installation script. If this happens enter: rm -R ghostman on the window, then go back to step 1 and try again)
Once you have this saved. Enter “y”
7. Your new cold staking wallet will then be created and you will see a prompt “Create new staking node public key?”. Enter “y”
8. It will ask you for a label. You can enter whatever you want but I am going to type “ghost-coldstaking”, like this:
9. From here your cold staking public key will be generated (the red box). It will start after the “. . .” dots and begin with “PGHST”, this key text will be white.
10. You want to save this key (copy and paste somewhere) as it will be needed to connect your Ghost wallet to your coldstaking node which we will cover in next section.
11. You can safely close the PuTTY or terminal window once you have both keys saved somewhere for the next section.
Connecting Ghost Wallet to your Cold staking VPS
Now we will finalize the install process and link your Ghost wallet to your newly created coldstaking VPS node. For this you will need your cold staking public key, which was covered in the last section.
- Now open your Ghost wallet and using the left sidebar make sure you are on the wallet you want to set up cold staking for.
- From the overview page you will click the “+” icon on the cold staking widget
3. This will open a new window…
4. This is where you will paste in the public key from the previous section “Installing ghostman on your VPS for cold staking” step 9, it starts with “PGHST”.
5. Paste in the key and click the blue button, “Enable cold staking”.
6. At the bottom of the wallet you should see a notification that says
7. (Possible Bug!) You do not need to enter your key again and after you see the notification text the cold staking widget may still say “Inactive” like this,
However if you look at the top status bar there will be a snowflake icon that should now be blue and say “Cold staking active”
8. To fix this UI issue close your wallet and reopen it….
9. Now once you restart the wallet your cold staking node status should now look like this
10. The activation time could take a decent amount of time. It is recommended to just wait.
11. However to skip the activation you can use the “ZAP” button (shown above)
12. This will create a new transaction and your coins will have to re-mature again (255 confirmations) that will take about ~7 hours but activation will be at 100% and you will only have to do this once.
13. Once everything is complete the cold staking status will now be at 100% and you wallet and the VPS are connected.
Finished
You do not need to keep your Ghost wallet open anymore to hot stake. The VPS will stake your coins for you now 24.7 so you can consistently earn staking rewards.
If you did not close the PUTTY window or Terminal window from earlier it’s safe to close this, the VPS will continue running.
