How-To: Downloading and Setting up a Wallet with Aeon-GUI

7 min readOct 1, 2018

Hello to all those looking to get into Aeon but have never used the GUI wallet before. This How-To will be to help anyone with downloading and setting up a new wallet with Windows or MacOS. Never used Aeon-GUI before? Well here is your chance to get started:

Select your operating system-specific download for the proper GUI.

First we want to head on over to GitHub or the official AEON website and download the latest release of Aeon-Gui. If you feel comfortable compiling yourself clone the master and take a stab at it. For this how-to, we will be using the release version. If you have MacOS or Linux Distros, simply click the tarball file to download it. Then on your device, select your download location and extract the zip file. If you are using Windows (Windows 10 for this how-to purposes), skip down to the windows installation part.

MacOS Installation:

MacOS unzip folder. Open it to view the App

Move from the downloads folder to the applications folder.

Now that we have installed Aeon-GUI on MacOS lets open it. Oh wait, what’s this!??!! What? What’s going on?

OSX doesn’t think Aeon-GUI is a legitimate program. Well, we know it’s the legitimate Aeon GUI since we downloaded it from the official github account. Always make sure you ONLY download Official Aeon software from the official AEON github account or your precious Aeon’s may not be safe. Click “OK” and head on over to Settings and then Security/Privacy.

Click “Open Anyway” to get started with the Aeon GUI startup.

We know where we downloaded the file from so click “Open Anyway”

WINDOWS INSTALLATION:

Before we download the Wallet GUI app zip we need to create a folder and let our virus scanner program know this folder is ok and to ignore files in this location. This is also useful for miner applications like XMR-Stak or XMrig where windows will automatically delete the file upon download. So let’s make an exception by using Cortana to find “Windows Defender Security Center”:

Ok. Now that we have clicked that lets move to Virus Threat Settings:

Ok, now lets scroll all the way down to the “Exclusions” option:

Now we have to create a new folder and put that folder on the exclusions list so that windows defender passes over it when scanning:

Ok, so finally windows will let us download the program we already knew was ok in the first place. Let’s download the latest release to this folder and unzip the contents.

HOLY SMOKES! There is like 20874325 files and folders in the zip. What do I click?

Ok, finally we are making progress on Windows. We are ready to get started with AEON-GUI. Lets click the executable and get rolling making a new wallet file with our new program. If you encounter issues with the application closing or errors opening, scroll down in the file folder and run the “start-low-graphics-mode” batch file. Some windows computers can not handle some graphics and this allows the program to use less system resources to run it.

Feel free to copy the batch file and make a desktop link for ease of opening so you don’t have to go to the folder every time to open the application.

Well we now have the application downloaded and ready to run on either MacOS or Windows 10. Let’s get rolling on opening it and creating a wallet file for the first time. If you already have a wallet file from the CLI you can simply copy paste the wallet.dat and wallet.keys to the GUI folder on windows or if using MacOS, the file locations for the wallet are the same for CLI or GUI wherever you select when setting up the wallet the first time.

There are 3 options for AEON-GUI when first starting the program.

1 - Create a new wallet: This option is if we want to create a new wallet file either because it is our first time using the program and we have no wallet, or sometimes users want multiple wallets on the same computer for say, a family member or a friend. We will be using this option for our how-to today.

2 - Restore wallet from keys or mnemonic seed: This is used if we are upgrading to a newer version of Aeon (post hard fork) or if we simply just want to restore an old wallet from the seed we saved when it was initially set up. This option is also used if you are importing a paper wallet. If you have an old wallet pre rebase from 2018, you MUST use this option to create a new wallet file. We won’t be using this option for this how-to.

3 - Open a wallet from file: Typically people will use this option if they got a new computer and they want to just open their old wallet file that is supported by this version of the software. Some people may also use this option if they ONLY connect to remote nodes and have no intention of running a node on their own personal computer. You simply select the location of your wallet file and enter your password and its good to go. We won’t be using this option for this how-to.

You can also set up a wallet for Testnet or Stagenet to help test the code when needed before release.

Ok. Now that we selected “Create a new wallet” we get this next screen. This is probably the most important screen you see when setting up a new wallet as it shows your 25-word seed. This seed of words will be required if you ever need to restore your wallet. Don’t share this with anyone you don’t trust or they can simply restore your seed on their computer and gain access to all your coins. Don’t take a screenshot of this and save it on your computer either as malware can find and access these to steal your seed. The most secure way to store this is to write it down on a piece of paper and toss it in your safe.

Wallet Name: Name your wallet anything
25-word seed: Random generation, no two seeds are the same
Wallet location: You can change this to any location of your choice

Now create a secure password. Don’t use password like me. That isn’t very secure and even Aeon-GUI is smart enough to know that.

lol password is not a secure password. Please don’t use password…..

Next we need to decide if we are going to use our own node or if we will be using a public node. You can also choose to run a blockchain bootstrap if you trust someone who is providing the blockchain for download. If you know your remote node, enter the address and port in the tabs below or use one from the public list here.

If you selected to run a node on your own computer this screen will pop up showing you verification where you want the blockchain location and available space on your drive. Please note aeon currently takes around 8GB of disk space for the entire blockchain not 50GB.

LMDB — Lightning Memory Mapped Database Manager, the folder name the Blockchain is stored in

Wow, we are almost there setting up our first wallet! After we hit ok and then the next arrow, we will be taken to a confirmation screen where we can verify everything we just did sans the SEED displayed. Just click “USE AEON” at the bottom right corner and we can start using the Aeon-GUI application!

Double Check everything is correct. If it is, click USE AEON. If not, you can click back to where you need to make changes such as Daemon address or wallet name.

YAY! We finally set up our first wallet!!! What a beauty she is. Those colors and format. Such a piece of work.

Thank you all for visiting today and I hope this helps you set up a wallet using the Aeon-Wallet-GUI. Stay tuned for more on how to use the wallet once it is set up fully. See you soon!