Migrating from Geth to Infura as your Ethereum wallet

With our v7.1 release, we've added Infura as a wallet option for Ethereum, and is recommended over Geth for its much decreased overhead and greater reliability.

If you are currently using Geth as your machine's Ether wallet, use this article to migrate to Infura.

Important note

If you've installed or are currently using Geth, the steps here are necessary before setting up Infura. If Geth is not disabled and the space it uses reclaimed, it will occupy resources and grow in space until your server's block volume is full and your machines are unable to sell any coin.

The following process will not affect your Ethereum wallet or seed, and you do not need to transfer funds as they'll be immediately recognised by Infura, however we always recommend backing up your wallet.

Stopping Geth and reclaiming space

In your server, run this command to stop Geth:

supervisorctl stop ethereum

Then, run the following to clear Geth's blockchain files. It will ask you to confirm so type Y and hit Enter.

geth removedb --datadir /mnt/blockchains/ethereum/ ipc:/mnt/blockchains/ethereum/geth.ipc

The above will take perhaps 15 minutes while it deletes a couple hundred gigabytes of data.

Once complete, run this in order to prevent Geth from starting up in the future:

mv /etc/supervisor/conf.d/ethereum.conf /root/ethereum.conf

Afterwards, take the opportunity to ensure that the rest of your wallets are updated by following the articles in the Wallet Updates section (however, do not follow the article for updating Geth).

Setting up Infura

After performing the above, use this article to continue: Setting up the Ethereum wallet with Infura

Consider a new server to save money

If you're running Geth, you're likely paying $120 per month for DigitalOcean hosting. It's what we recommended because Geth requires higher resources and volume space.

However, when using Infura, you only need a droplet and volume that cost $47 per month.

DigitalOcean doesn't allow for downgrades to droplet and volume plans, however, you could migrate your machines over to a new server which will cost less than half the amount you may be paying now.