Prepare a Wallet for Uploads

Use this guide when you need a wallet that can pay for uploads.

This guide covers the shared wallet setup concerns across the SDK, CLI, and direct Rust interfaces.

It explains:

• what local development gives you automatically

• what changes on Arbitrum Sepolia and Arbitrum One

• which tools need which wallet input

• how to check the wallet, token balance, and gas balance before you upload

If you want to understand public addresses and DataMap handling rather than upload wallets, see Keys, Addresses, and DataMaps.

Start with your environment

The practical difference between environments is:

Environment	Wallet state
Local devnet	Wallet and balances are provisioned for you
Arbitrum Sepolia	Use a test wallet funded with test ANT and test gas
Arbitrum One	Use a production wallet funded with real ANT and gas on the selected EVM network

If you are only building read-only features, you do not need any of this wallet setup.

Prerequisites

• antd or ant installed (see Start the Local Daemon for daemon setup)

• A hex-encoded key you already control for payments and uploads when you are not using the local devnet

Steps

1. Know which tools need which wallet input

The toolchain expects:

• antd -> AUTONOMI_WALLET_KEY

• ant -> SECRET_KEY

• ant-core -> an attached Wallet in Rust

If you do not want the daemon to hold the wallet key, use the external-signer flow instead.

2. Configure a wallet for antd

For direct-wallet uploads on Arbitrum Sepolia or Arbitrum One, start antd with both the wallet key and the EVM payment settings.

From the ant-sdk/antd build directory, run:

export AUTONOMI_WALLET_KEY="<hex_private_key>"
export EVM_RPC_URL="https://your-rpc-endpoint"
export EVM_PAYMENT_TOKEN_ADDRESS="0x..."
export EVM_PAYMENT_VAULT_ADDRESS="0x..."
./target/release/antd

If antd is already on your PATH, replace ./target/release/antd with antd.

3. Configure a wallet for ant

The direct-network CLI uses SECRET_KEY.

export SECRET_KEY="0x<hex_private_key>"
ant --evm-network arbitrum-one wallet address

4. Verify the active wallet

antd

curl http://localhost:8082/v1/wallet/address
curl http://localhost:8082/v1/wallet/balance

ant

5. Keep high-value keys outside the daemon when needed

If you do not want antd to hold a wallet key, run it without AUTONOMI_WALLET_KEY and use the external-signer flow instead.

From the ant-sdk/antd build directory, run:

EVM_RPC_URL=https://your-rpc-endpoint \
EVM_PAYMENT_TOKEN_ADDRESS=0x... \
EVM_PAYMENT_VAULT_ADDRESS=0x... \
./target/release/antd

If antd is already on your PATH, replace ./target/release/antd with antd.

Use EVM_PAYMENT_VAULT_ADDRESS for both wave-batch and Merkle external-signer uploads in this configuration.

That keeps signing outside the daemon and pushes transaction submission into your wallet or signer integration.

Verify it worked

You are correctly configured when the chosen tool reports the expected wallet address and balance, and write operations stop returning wallet-not-configured errors.

Common errors

503 Service Unavailable: antd is running, but the wallet key is missing for direct-wallet writes or the EVM payment settings are missing for external-signer uploads.

Unsupported local wallet command: ant wallet with --evm-network local requires a devnet manifest.

Invalid key format: Check for missing hex prefix, whitespace, or truncated secrets.

Next steps

• Start the Local Daemon

• Estimate Costs and Handle Upload Payments

• Use External Signers for Upload Payments

• Build Read-Only Features

• Keys, Addresses, and DataMaps