You’ll know from previous posts that I’ve had trouble using the official Ethereum node wallet. This is the full node downloaded from the official Ethereum project website.
The problem is that you can’t see transactions made to or from your wallet until your wallet has synced with the entire blockchain.
This is easier said than done.
Even using decent broadband, I’m always 100,000 blocks behind. The rate that my wallet downloads at is maybe one block per second.
I’ve been trying for weeks to catchup and without success.
It’s time to cut my losses and write this off.
Luckily, I didn’t have that many ETH in there. I’ve only bought two purchases of 0.5 ETH for a total of 1 ETH.
The first time I noticed that I would have a problem was when I bought the second lot of 0.5 ETH. My wallet wouldn’t show receipt of the 0.5 ETH. The node needed to be up to date before showing the transaction.
I tried to send 0.1 to my Exodus wallet and managed to do so. I tried to transfer the remaining 0.4 ETH that I could see in my Ethereum wallet but this didn’t work.
For now, I’m going to use my Exodus wallet for ETH up to an amount of about GBP 500 and use my Trezor wallet for larger amounts.
The only problem I see for the Trezor wallet is that for ETH, it requires an integration with Myetherwallet.com. This extra step isn’t as user-friendly as I would have hoped for with the Trezor wallet. Why can’t I just send my ETH directly to the Trezor, just as I do with Bitcoin?
This makes me want to try out the Ledger Nano S, which from some research is able to receive ETH directly to the device.
Their website currently says shipping dates start on 30th September! They clearly have more demand than supply.
Takeaway
Anyway. the takeaway from this post is to test any wallet first with very small amounts that you could handle losing should the wallet be unusable. Transfer small amounts and practise sending and receiving. If this doesn’t work or the wallet takes years to sync, then at least this way, you won’t have lost large amounts.
Thanks for sharing your experiences.
You say: “…test any wallet first with very small amounts that you could handle
losing should the wallet be unusable. Transfer small amounts and
practise sending and receiving”
Should I do this for any cryptocurrency, like BTC as well?
Should I do it with any wallet, like paper wallet created with MyEtherWallet?
Hey Wise, I definitely would test using small amounts, with any new wallets and with any new cryptocurrency. For example, say that I got a new Trezor wallet (my first) and I set it up and decided to send 1 BTC to it, but I got the address wrong or I wasn’t able to send BTC out of it later down the line. It would have been more prudent and cautious to practice sending and receiving to the Trezor with maybe 0.05 BTC instead. Hope that helps?
Can you explain what “the full Ethereum node wallet” is?
(I’m complete beginner to this.)
Hey Wise, no worries at all! “the full Ethereum node wallet” is the official wallet from the Ethereum Project at https://www.ethereum.org/ . This will run a node of the Ethereum blockchain on your computer. The problem I found with using it is that you have to sync with the entire blockchain to see the latest transactions on your wallet. In the end, my node wallet never caught up, so it became unusable and I lost my ETH. Hope that helps?
I probably will not use that wallet. So far I tested MyEtherWallet – it’s a paper wallet. But when making transfers with it the entire blockchain does not have to be synced on my computer right? I have to avoid anything that requires speedy and lengthy internet connection since I’m living in India and connection is slow and breaks often.
Hi Wise, I haven’t used MyEtherWallet before unfortunately. I will use Exodus for my ETH for the time being.
Hi Wise, hope all is well. I came across this article about Ethereum wallets on another site and thought you might find it useful. Hope it helps! https://99bitcoins.com/best-ethereum-wallet-review/
You can still extract the private key from your full node Wallet and get access by importing the json or private key into myetherwallet.com