Generating a Cold Wallet
The following procedure allows you to generate an extremely secure Arweave cold wallet. Using this procedure, your keys will never be exposed to an internet-connected computer before you intend to use your tokens, giving you exceptionally strong guarantees about the security of your AR.
This procedure may seem long but we have broken each of its steps down into granular chunks that should be simple to follow
Download and install the Arweave web extension for Chrome, Firefox, or Brave
Right click on the new Arweave icon in your browser, then select ‘Options’
Disconnect your computer from the internet
Click ‘Wallets’ in the top right-hand corner of the page
Click ‘Create new wallet’
Save this file somewhere safe on your machine
Make copies of this file on multiple offline storage mediums (for example, USB sticks or prints of the file to physical paper). Store these copies securely
Click ‘Load Wallet’ on the web extension and load the key file
Set a password
Mouse over the wallet address and save the wallet address for later use in order to receive tokens from others
Optionally, click ‘Wallet’ again, and you can then select the wallet itself, then click the red ‘Remove’ option to delete the wallet from the web extension
Delete the key file from your hard drive, after having ensured the safety of your offline backups. Optionally, use BleachBit or similar to write over the file a number of times
Reconnect to the internet
Congratulations for completing the steps! Your AR tokens will now be stored safely and securely for months and years to come
Had problems? Don’t worry, drop us a line at team@arweave.org and we'd be happy to help.
