I would love a guide for how people can try out Cardano without using real ADA.
In particular, I haven’t seen an answer on these forums regarding the best way for people to interact with a testnet or launch their own testnet with available fake ADA:
Hi @rickymac,
I think there is some confusion, which comes from the lazy definitions of almost everything in the space.
- Wallet only means a Public/Private key pair.
- They meant Daedalus (the app/program) when they referred to Wallet.
- Daedalus can have multiple Wallets derivated from the root Public/Private keys (as it uses Hierarchical deterministic keys), see:Cardano’s HD Wallets
But, Why I do not recommend to have multiple Daedalus app/program on the same computer is the following:
- The Daedalus has two parts: Frontend (Electron GUI) and and Backend (a full node w/ ReST API).
- Backend uses localhost’s port 8090 to allow connections from any clients.
- If a node is running on a Computer, you cannot start another Daedalus as the other full node is already listening on that port.
I explain why this is a problem.
So, if you start your Daedalus /w your account and your lock your computer, and somebody that can access to the same computer by switching (not log out/log in but switching) user and he/she starts a Daedalus, then she /he will be very surprised as she/he will see your wallets in the started Daedalous.
So, Daedalus should use some basic auth or some client certificate to allow a connection at least.
This is not possible as Daedalus wallet data is stored in %appdata% folder of respective users.
I do not want to argue, so I have tested my theory (it’s not a theory it’s a fact how hybrid TCP/IP stack works) on my Macbook Pro, by
- creating a testuser,
- started the Daedalus on my primary account then
- switched (switched and not logged out, that’s important) to the testuser,
- started a new Daedalus that stores their RocksDB and other stuffs under testuser’s ~/Library/Application Support/Daedalus and
- voala I could see my primary’s acocunt w/ the relevant amount of ADA and, even the transactions.
There is no any magic in it to someone who knows how TCP/IP Networking works as Daedalus stores its metadata in the backend, the issue is w/ the Design decisions themselves.
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The trick is that the Daedalus frontend (testuser’s) connects to an already running backend (the original user’s full node where all the data, metadata are stored).
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Oh, I forget to mention, when the Daedalus starts on the testuser’s account you need to select the language and agree on the Term’s and Conditions, after that you will see the magic.
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That’s a bit scary! 
Maybe it deserves a new topic in Developers?
@_ilap, that’s pretty cool you experimented and tested that on your computer, that the primary wallet showed up. Also, at the same time, I still think I am correct in saying the web page is not accurate, as the Daedalus wallet allows a user to make multiple wallets inside the same wallet. That is why I think they need to change the web page to say “another instance” or “more than 1 instance” of Daedalus which is different than running 2 or more wallets inside the same single instance of Daedalus.
Thank you for the detailed description. I can’t test it at the moment because not in front of my PC, but are you 100% sure that the wallet keys are stored on the local node and not the frontends file system folder?
I always understood the current Daedalus implementation as an intermediate (beta) solution before they became clearly separated into staking pools and (light) wallets.
IMHO many users simply expect to use a wallet app the same way as they have for other altcoins, and don’t know about the “proxy-node” running on their PC.