Arqma Wallet — frequently asked questions

Only from our official /download page. It lists verified Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS builds, each mirrored from the project's GitHub releases so you can compare hashes against source. Bookmark the /download URL and check it before every update. Any other site offering an Arqma Wallet download — search ads, mirror sites, private messages — is unofficial and almost always a phishing attempt designed to harvest your 25-word seed phrase.

Yes. Arqma Wallet is fully open-source under a permissive license and free to download, use, fork, and audit. There is no subscription, no premium tier, and no in-wallet upsell. The only cost of using it is the small per-transaction ARQ network fee, which goes entirely to miners and Service Nodes that secure the network — never to a company or the Arqma team.

The wallet itself is open-source and continuously audited by the community on GitHub. The safety of your funds, though, depends almost entirely on your own habits: download only the official binary from /download, verify the hash, keep your 25-word seed phrase offline on paper or steel, and never paste it into any website, chat, or support form. A non-custodial wallet is as safe as the user makes it — Arqma cannot freeze, refund, or recover funds for you.

GUI is the graphical desktop wallet for Windows, macOS, and Linux — the easiest option for most users and what we recommend by default. CLI is the command-line wallet for advanced users, node operators, and Service Node stakers. Mobile (Android, iOS) is convenient for day-to-day spending and small balances. Web wallets are the most convenient and the least safe surface — never store meaningful amounts of ARQ in a browser wallet.

Only if you still have your 25-word seed phrase. On any Arqma Wallet build, choose Restore from seed, enter the 25 words in order, set a new password, and the wallet rebuilds the same addresses and balance from scratch. Without the seed phrase and without the password, no one — including the Arqma team — can recover the funds. This is a deliberate property of self-custody, not a bug.

Install the official Arqma Wallet from /download on the new machine, launch it, and choose Restore wallet from seed. Type the 25 words in the original order (mind capitalisation and language), set a new password, and pick a restore height — use the block height from the day you first created the wallet to dramatically shorten the rescan, or leave it at 0 to scan from genesis. The wallet will resync the chain and your full balance and address history reappear. The seed phrase is the only thing you need; the old wallet file, password, and PC are not required.

Never. Arqma Wallet itself only asks for the 25 words once — when you choose Restore from seed during setup — and that prompt is local on your device. The Arqma team does not run a support desk that asks for keys, does not message users asking to verify a wallet, and does not operate any service that needs your seed. Anyone asking for it — in chat, by email, on a fake support site, in a browser extension — is trying to steal your ARQ. The only safe place for the 25 words is offline on paper or steel.

Wallet files are stored locally on your device — never on Arqma servers. On Windows: %AppData%\Arqma. On macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Arqma. On Linux: ~/.arqma. Back up that directory if you want a fast restore, but the 25-word seed phrase is the only backup that actually matters — it can rebuild every wallet file from scratch on any OS.

Not at the moment. Hardware-wallet support depends on vendor integration (Ledger, Trezor) and the relevant firmware apps shipping CryptoNote-family support for Arqma. Until that lands, the closest practical equivalent for cold storage is the desktop GUI on a dedicated offline machine, with the 25-word seed phrase written down and stored physically — ideally on steel, in two separate locations.

The most common causes, in order: a slow or unreliable remote node, your local node still catching up to the chain tip, a firewall blocking the peer port, or your system clock being out of sync. First, switch to a different remote node in Settings → Node. If that doesn't help, check your clock, allow arqmad through your firewall on port 19993, and confirm you're on the latest wallet version from /download.

Yes. By default Arqma Wallet connects to a trusted remote node so you can send, receive, and check your balance in seconds without downloading the full chain. Open Settings → Node and pick a remote node, or paste your own. The trade-off: a public remote node sees the transactions it relays for you (not your keys, not your balances on other nodes). For maximum privacy, run your own arqmad node locally and point the wallet at 127.0.0.1 — that's the only setup where nobody but you sees your network activity.

Don't panic and don't reinstall over the broken wallet directory yet. (1) Close Arqma Wallet completely so no process is locking the file. (2) Make a copy of the wallet folder (Windows: %AppData%\Arqma, macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Arqma, Linux: ~/.arqma) before doing anything else. (3) On the latest build from /download, choose Restore from seed and enter your 25-word seed phrase — this rebuilds a fresh, clean wallet file with the same addresses and balance. The seed phrase is the recovery path; the wallet file itself is disposable.

Open Arqma Wallet, go to the Send tab, paste the recipient's Arqma address (95 characters, starting with ar...), enter the amount in ARQ, optionally pick a priority (higher priority = larger fee = faster confirmation), and click Send. The wallet signs the transaction locally with your spend key and broadcasts it through your connected node. Stealth addresses, ring signatures, and RingCT are applied automatically — you don't need to enable anything. Double-check the address before sending: like every Arqma transaction, sends are final and cannot be reversed.

An Arqma transaction usually shows up in the recipient's wallet as unconfirmed within seconds of broadcasting, then locks in over the next few blocks. Arqma's target block time is two minutes, and most wallets and merchants treat 10 confirmations (~20 minutes) as fully settled. If a transaction looks stuck, the cause is almost always wallet-side: a slow remote node, a desynced local node, or a low-priority fee on a busy block. Switch nodes in Settings → Node or bump priority on the next send.

No. Arqma uses subaddresses and stealth addresses, so each Arqma address you create is already unique on-chain — the recipient can tell payments apart without any extra identifier. Payment IDs (the old long-form integrated-address mechanism inherited from CryptoNote) are deprecated for normal sends and you can ignore them in Arqma Wallet. The only time you might encounter one is if an older exchange or service explicitly tells you to attach a payment ID; in that case, paste the ID they give you into the Payment ID field on the Send screen and the wallet handles the rest.

Arqma uses the RandomARQ proof-of-work algorithm, a RandomX-family design that is CPU-friendly and resistant to ASICs and NiceHash rentals. You can mine solo from a full node by running arqmad with mining enabled, or you can point a RandomARQ-compatible miner at a community pool. See the mining docs on the project's GitHub for the current pool list, recommended miner builds, and worker configuration.

Total supply is approximately 18.4 million ARQ across the main emission curve, followed by a perpetual tail emission. The tail emission keeps miners and Service Nodes economically incentivised to secure the network long after the main emission tapers off, which is critical for a privacy chain that depends on a healthy mining base for ring-signature anonymity.

Run arqmad with the default config to sync a full Arqma node from genesis. Open p2p port 19993 inbound so other peers can connect to you, which improves overall network health. For staking a Service Node, follow the Service Node setup guide on GitHub: it requires a fixed ARQ stake, a publicly reachable IP, and uptime monitoring in exchange for a share of block rewards.

RandomARQ is the proof-of-work algorithm Arqma uses for mining. It's a RandomX-family design that relies on random code execution and large memory access patterns, which favors general-purpose CPUs and makes building an efficient ASIC very expensive. It also varies enough over time that rental marketplaces like NiceHash can't cheaply 51%-attack the chain — keeping mining decentralised and accessible to anyone with a regular computer.

Service Nodes are operators that stake a fixed amount of ARQ to provide additional network services on top of base Arqma mining, and earn a share of block rewards in return. You can run one if you have the required stake, a server with a public IP, and the willingness to monitor uptime. See the Service Node setup guide on the project's GitHub for the current stake amount, hardware requirements, and step-by-step configuration.

No. The wallet runs entirely on your device and we don't operate any service that sees user balances. If you connect to a public remote node, that node sees the transactions it relays for you — not your private keys, but your network activity. For full privacy, run your own arqmad node and point the wallet at 127.0.0.1.

Effectively, yes — that's how stealth addresses work. You share one public Arqma address, but every payment sent to it is written on-chain to a unique one-time destination address derived from your public keys. An outside observer scanning the blockchain cannot link two incoming payments to the same recipient, and cannot tie your public address to any on-chain entry. You don't need to rotate addresses manually; the privacy is built in at the protocol level.

The 25-word seed phrase IS your private key, written in human-readable form. Under the hood, Arqma derives a private spend key and a private view key from those 25 words — the spend key authorises transactions, the view key only lets someone read incoming payments (useful for accountants or auditors). You back up the seed phrase, not the raw keys: the seed regenerates everything else on any device. Never share the seed; share a view key only if you genuinely want someone to see your incoming payments.

Ring signatures mix your real transaction input with several decoys, so an outside observer can't tell which input is actually spending. Stealth addresses generate a unique one-time destination address for every payment, so your public address is never directly linked on-chain. RingCT (Ring Confidential Transactions) hides the amount being sent. Together, they make Arqma transactions private by default — not opt-in.

Yes. The wallet, the daemon (arqmad), and the supporting tooling are all open-source on GitHub under permissive licenses. You can read the code, build from source, file issues, and submit pull requests. This is the only credible way to ship a privacy wallet — closed-source privacy software is a contradiction.

No. There is no KYC, no email signup, no account, and no telemetry that ties you to a real-world identity. You download the wallet, generate keys locally, and that's it. The only network metadata that exists is what your remote node sees when it relays your transactions — which is why we recommend running your own node for full privacy.

Arqma Wallet is a non-custodial wallet, which means the 25-word seed phrase and the private keys it derives are generated on your machine, stored on your machine, and never sent to Arqma or anyone else. There is no Arqma account to log into, no support team that can sign for you, and no way for the project to freeze, reverse, or recover your ARQ. The whole protocol is built around this: a privacy chain only works if the user — not a custodian — controls the keys.

When you choose Create new wallet, Arqma Wallet generates a 25-word seed phrase locally and derives your private spend key, private view key, and public Arqma address from it. To send ARQ, the wallet signs the transaction on your device with the spend key and broadcasts only the signed transaction — never the key itself — through the connected arqmad node. To receive, anyone with your public address can pay you, and stealth addresses hide each payment on-chain. Your seed phrase never leaves the device unless you copy it out yourself.

Yes, by a wide margin. Leaving ARQ on an exchange means trusting a third party that can be hacked, regulated, delisted, or freeze withdrawals — and on a privacy coin, exchange custody is the single biggest deanonymisation surface. Arqma Wallet removes that risk entirely: only you hold the 25-word seed phrase. The trade-off is real — lose the seed and the ARQ is gone, share it and it's stolen — but for any amount of ARQ you intend to hold for more than a few days, self-custody in Arqma Wallet is the safer choice.

Download the official Arqma Wallet from /download, install it, and choose Create new wallet. Set a strong password, then write down the 25-word seed phrase on paper (never a screenshot, never the cloud), confirm the words in order, and you're done. The wallet will sync to the network and you'll have a non-custodial Arqma address ready to receive ARQ.

Arqma Wallet, for anything you're not actively trading. Exchanges are custodial: the venue holds the keys, can freeze withdrawals, can delist ARQ, and exposes your trades to KYC databases. Arqma Wallet is non-custodial: you hold the keys, there is no KYC, and your transactions inherit ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT by default. Use exchanges only as a brief swap layer — move ARQ into your Arqma Wallet address as soon as the trade settles.

No. Arqma Wallet is non-custodial — you hold the only copy of the keys. Quick contrast: Coinbase and Binance accounts are custodial (the exchange holds your keys and can freeze withdrawals). Trust Wallet, MetaMask, Exodus, and Ledger are non-custodial like Arqma — the user holds the keys. The dividing line is always the same question: who controls the seed phrase? If it's the company, it's custodial. With Arqma, only you ever see the 25 words.

The Arqma team does not sell ARQ and does not endorse any specific venue, but the community typically acquires ARQ in three no-KYC-friendly ways: (1) Mining — RandomARQ is CPU-friendly, so a regular computer can earn ARQ via a community pool. (2) Running a Service Node and earning block rewards in exchange for stake and uptime. (3) Peer-to-peer or instant-swap services that don't require an account. Always send freshly received ARQ to a non-custodial Arqma Wallet address you control — never leave it on a third-party platform.

Arqma is built on the same CryptoNote / Monero codebase and inherits the same privacy primitives — ring signatures, stealth addresses, and RingCT — so transaction amounts, senders, and receivers are private by default. The main differences: Arqma uses RandomARQ instead of RandomX, has its own emission schedule and smaller supply (~18.4M ARQ), and adds Service Nodes for additional network services on top of base privacy.