Installing Helium CLI Wallet

Running From a Release

Releases of the Helium CLI Wallet are available on GitHub. Select the appropriate package for your operating system.

Unpack the zip file and place the helium-wallet binary in your $PATH. This operation differs depending on your operating system but is a common task and easily searchable.

Building From Source

The Helium CLI Wallet is open-source, written in Rust, and can be compiled with appropriate tooling. For build instructions, see the Building from Source section on the helium‑wallet‑rs GitHub repo.

Usage

At any time, use --help to see the most recent in-program documentation.

At the time of this writing, version 2.0.0-rc.3 looks like this:

./helium-wallet --help

Common options for most wallet commands

Usage: helium-wallet [OPTIONS] <COMMAND>

Commands:

info      Get wallet information

balance   Get the balance for a wallet or a given public key. The balance is given for each of the Helium related holdings of a given Solana address

upgrade   Upgrade a wallet to the latest supported version of the given format. The same password is used to decrypt the old and encrypt the new wallet

router    Operations on routers

create    Create a new wallet or keypair

hotspots  Commands on hotspots

dc        Commands on data credits

transfer  Send one (or more) payments to given addresses

export    Exports encrypted wallet seed as QR-encoded JSON or raw seed via stdout

help      Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:

-f, --file <FILES>  File(s) to use [default: wallet.key]

--url <URL>     Solana RPC URL to use [default: m]

-h, --help          Print help

-V, --version       Print version

Exploring the help menu is always a good way to orient yourself. To learn more about a certain transaction (or subcommand), simply append --help. e.g.:

./helium-wallet dc --help

Commands on data credits

Usage: helium-wallet dc <COMMAND>

Commands:

price     Get the amount of HNT needed to buy a given number of USD worth of Data Credits

mint      Burn HNT to Data Credits (DC) from this wallet to given payees wallet

delegate  Delegate DC from this wallet to a given router

help      Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:

-h, --help  Print help

Basic Commands

Create Wallet

helium-wallet create basic

This command will create an account as a single key, stored in wallet.key which gets output in the same directory where the command is run.

Upon creation, the CLI will prompt you for a password that encrypts the file. A strong password will make it difficult for someone to brute force the file should the file be compromised.

Display Wallet

Displaying information for an account without needing its password can be done using:

$ helium-wallet info

To display a QR code for the public key of the given Wallet use:

$ helium-wallet info --qr

The QR Code is useful for sending tokens to the account from a wallet app.

Wallet Creation Features

Creating a Wallet above is easy, but there's a lot more flexibility you might not know about. It's always recommended to explore the help menu to learn more:

$ helium-wallet create basic --help

Create a new basic wallet

Usage: helium-wallet create basic [OPTIONS]

Options:

-o, --output <OUTPUT>  Output file to store the key in [default: wallet.key]

--force            Overwrite an existing file

--seed             Use a BIP39 or mobile app seed phrase to generate the wallet keys

-h, --help             Print help

Managing Multiple Accounts

A more precise location or filename can be specified when creating an account by using the --output flag. e.g.:

$ helium-wallet create basic --output ~/my-wallets/wallet-5.key

You can specify a file other than the default ./wallet.key by using the global option --file. e.g.:

$ helium-wallet -f ~/my-wallets/wallet-5.key transfer <AMOUNT> <ADDRESS> <TOKEN>

Import Seed-phrase Account into CLI

The --seed flag enables you to import an account secured by a 12 or 24-word seed phrase.

Enter the command:

$ helium-wallet create basic --seed

After you press enter, you will be prompted for your seed words, separated by spaces.

Export to Helium Wallet App

Helium Wallets created using the CLI can be exported to the Helium Wallet App.

$ helium-wallet export

You will be prompted for the Wallet Password, (this is not your seed phrase, this password was input when the Wallet was created.)

The export command will display the seed phrase associated with the given account. This seed phrase can be used with the Helium Wallet App or other Solana ecosystem wallets.

Helium L1 Migration to Solana

If you have a wallet from before the migration to Solana (April 18th, 2023), you can migrate it using this widget:

Helium Address:

Solana Address:

Seed Wallet

Once this is done, the wallet should work on Solana. You can see a mapping from the Helium L1 address to the Solana Address: