Today we’re going to teach you how to setup a masternode without spending any money for coins. This article is meant to explain how you can experiment with masternode setups without risking any assets. We will require a VPS to do this, so if you don’t have one setup, you can go to www.vultr.com , create an account and setup a VPS fairly quickly. You will also need to know how to use Linux commands. Those are all the requirements you’ll need.
Step One
Little bit clarification on what we’re going to do. We will simulate a masternode setup on a testnet network and not on a mainnet network. Meaning that you will setup your masternode the same way you would normally do on a live network. The coins that we will use here have no value and can be obtained through a faucet or through contacting a developer. In our case we will use the PIVX testnet.
First, we’ll need to download a wallet on both your local computer (desktop, laptop, etc…) and one for your VPS. Head over to https://pivx.org/#wallet and download the wallet for your Operating system.
Setting up the masternode
After you’ve downloaded and installed the wallet, you’ll need to launch the wallet for 2-3 minutes. This will give enough time for the client to create its own hidden folders which we will need in order to switch from mainnet to testnet. After you’ve shut down your wallets, you’ll need to find pivx.conf file. On Linux, by default it will be in /root/.pivx
On Windows, by default it will be in C:\Users\
After you open the .conf file you’ll need to add this line: testnet=1
And save the file. After that you can start the wallets again. To be sure you are on the correct network, use the debug window by using this command:
getblockchaininfo
This will return several outputs, but the ones we are most interested in is “Chain”. It should return “test”. If it returns something else, that means that you are not on testnet.
While the clients are syncing with the network, now we need some coins. Head over to their official discord channel at https://discord.gg/xwvmW9 and ask for some testnet coins ( at least 10,002 ).
After you’ve received your coins follow the official guide https://pivxmasternode.org/2017/03/08/step-step-guide-setting-masternode/ .
When adding information in the pivx.conf file do not remove the “testnet=1” line.
And that’s it, you should have a fully functioning masternode for which you paid $0 (if we don’t count the VPS, which you can skip if you have a second machine).
Conclusion
The article above describes how to setup a masternode on PIVX but can be used for any network which has an open testnet network. If you want to test it for DASH or Zcoin as an example, you’ll need to download the official core wallet and find the locations of the .conf, but the steps are basically the same.