Your first Arc wallet

A wallet is not an account and nobody can reset it for you. Understand that one sentence and you are ahead of most newcomers.

What a wallet actually is

A wallet is a keypair: a public address, like an email address, which you share freely because it is how people send you things, and a private key, which is the only copy of a password that is the money. The wallet app — MetaMask is the common choice, and it works with Arc — just manages those keys. There is no company holding your funds, which means there is also no forgot-password button.

The recovery phrase — the 12 or 24 words shown once at setup — can regenerate your key on any device. Whoever has those words has everything you own. Write them on paper, store them somewhere physical, and never type them into any website, app or support chat, ever. That rule has no exceptions; every request for your phrase is theft in progress.

Setting up

1. Install MetaMask from its official site. Type the URL; do not click an ad, because fake wallet downloads are a real scam.
2. Create the wallet, record the phrase on paper, confirm it.
3. Add the Arc network. It takes a minute with the current network details, and there are two quirks that confuse people: your balance may be labelled ETH though it is dollars, and fees are in USDC.

Try it, free

Arc's test network lets you practise with play-money USDC before mainnet opens on September 16. Get free test dollars from Circle's faucet at faucet.circle.com, send some to a second address you create, and watch it settle in under a second for a fraction of a cent. Ten minutes of this teaches more than ten articles.

The habits that keep you safe from day one

• The phrase never goes anywhere digital.
• You double-check the first and last four characters of any address before sending.
• You sign nothing you do not understand.
• You treat every DM about your wallet as hostile.