Saving on monthly server costs

If you have an admin you set up prior to 2018, you may be overpaying for your monthly DigitalOcean hosting if you installed Geth as your Ethereum wallet.

We've introduced two wallet options that allow for much reduced server costs, as low as $20 monthly.

Infura instead of Geth (ETH)

Geth had required an ever increasing amount of space for the Ethereum blockchain, causing operators to periodically resize their attached volumes, raising its cost.

Offering ETH via Infura requires no attached block volume.

BitGo instead of node wallets (BTC, ZEC, BCH, LTC, DASH)

Node wallets, while reliable and requiring no third party, increase server requirements.

Using BitGo instead, a security-conscious third-party wallet service, you may use a $20/mo. droplet instead of a $40/mo. one.

However, BitGo charges a service fee of 0.1% of the value of a transaction. Depending on your volumes, you may be saving more overhead by using node wallets instead.

Options

Given the above, you may offer all available coins with the two configurations:

BitGo & Infura – $20/mo. droplet

Node wallets & Infura – $40/mo. droplet

Creating a smaller server

DigitalOcean allows upgrading one's server plan, though not downsizing. Thus, to use a smaller server, first, create a new server following our latest setup guide.

You may use your existing SSH key, rather than create a new one.

Install and configure the server as you otherwise would following the guide, configuring Infura for ETH, and first using our BitGo update article and then the BitGo setup article.

Migrating machines and server

To migrate your machines to the new server:

1. First, ensure any of the new admin's fields in red are filled in and no longer red, and that you see deposit addresses in your new admin's 'Maintenance > Funding' panel.
2. Then, unpair your machines from the old admin's 'Maintenance > Machines' panel using the 'Unpair' button.
3. Generate a pairing code in your new admin, and scan the pairing code at your machine.
4. From the old server, send funds from the old wallets to addresses in the new wallets, using the lamassu-send-coins command.
5. Then backup the wallets of your old server to ensure you have copies in the event any funds are accidentally sent to old addresses.
6. Also, export any transaction logs that you'd like to preserve from the old server.
7. Once you've confirmed that your funds are safely in your new wallets, you have your transaction logs, and that your old wallets are backed up, you may delete your old server and its volume from DigitalOcean.

⚠️ Note: When you 'destroy' the old droplet, its volume is not automatically deleted as well. For this, you must click on the 'Volumes' tab within the DigitalOcean control panel and delete it there. Otherwise, DigitalOcean will continue to charge you for the old volume.