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Signet is a bitcoin test network where coins are free and plentiful. It provides a good opportunity to test Ark without risking real money. In this tutorial you will use bark to send and receive signet coins using the Ark protocol.

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Create your wallet

1

Verify Bark is installed

To ensure that bark is installed, run bark --version. Follow the installation instructions if you need to.
2

Create a new signet wallet

The first step is to create a new signet wallet. You need to tell the wallet the URL of your Ark server and where it can find chain data.
Use bark --help to see what the command-line program can do. For example, when you want to create a wallet, running bark create --help will give you more info.
Esplora is the easiest chain source to configure. But you can also use your own signet node if you prefer.
Don’t switch the esplora instance. We are running a version that includes package relay which will be merged in soon.
bark create --signet --ark ark.signet.2nd.dev --esplora esplora.signet.2nd.dev
Getting an error about unexpected datadir contents?If you see an error like Datadir has unexpected contents: ~/.bark/db.sqlite, you have an old wallet from previous testing. While we’re in beta, wallets are typically not backward compatible between versions, so you’ll need to remove the old data and create a fresh wallet:
rm -rf ~/.bark
Then run the bark create command above again.

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Board the Ark and see your balance increase

1

Check your balance

Let’s check your balance.
bark balance
Oh, you are broke! Let’s fix that!
2

Get your Ark address

To receive money on Ark you need to share your Ark address which you can find using the following command.
bark address
3

Get sats from the faucet

You can get sats using our signet faucet. You will need to authenticate using your GitHub account and provide the address you obtained above.
Screenshot of the Ark signet faucet interface
4

Confirm your funds

Check your balance again to confirm you have received the funds.
bark balance
Congratulations! You have boarded the Ark. Notice that you received the balance instantly and you didn’t need to pay any transaction fees.

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Inspect your VTXOs

Your Ark wallet manages VTXOs (virtual transaction outputs) instead of regular UTXOs. You can inspect your newly received VTXO. 
bark vtxos
The output looks similar to: 
[
  {
    "id": "7d53e2c1e57c4c40dbe942c9a040c95e92db7c4486b2faf9163804097fa165bc:0",
    "amount_sat": 59888,
    "policy_type": "pubkey",
    "utxo": "7d53e2c1e57c4c40dbe942c9a040c95e92db7c4486b2faf9163804097fa165bc:0",
    "user_pubkey": "025577f6f44237f4c334b50c257c8feab6ff89d5591db2aff0ffee5c7bef7c03db",
    "server_pubkey": "02f0f358c1b6173ddecec1ad06b42d3762f193e6ff98a3e112292aec21129f9f6b",
    "expiry_height": 271138,
    "exit_delta": 12
  }
]

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Refresh in a round

VTXOs have a limited lifetime and must be periodically refreshed in a round. Our signet Ark server runs a round every 30 seconds for testing, but be aware that production servers will run rounds much less frequently. When you run the refresh command, you have to wait until the next round starts. 
bark refresh --all
Run bark vtxos again to confirm your old VTXO has been replaced by a new one with policy_type set to round. In the current implementation users must refresh coins manually, but any production-quality wallet will handle this automatically.

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Spend your money and buy a treat for Byte

1

Create an order

We’d like you to buy our mascot, Byte, a treat. You can order one in our signet test store.
Screenshot of the Ark signet store
2

Pay the invoice

After creating an order, the shop will give you a BOLT11 invoice, which can be paid using the following command.
bark send <bolt11-invoice>
You can use bark to pay:
  • a BOLT11 invoice using Lightning
  • an LNURL using Lightning
  • a bitcoin address for an on-chain payment
  • an Ark address for a user in the same Ark

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Getting your money out, aka off-boarding

You can offboard your funds back to a regular on-chain UTXO. This is the cheapest and fastest way to leave Ark. 
bark offboard --all
If the Ark server is uncooperative, you can always perform an emergency exit instead. For more on how offboarding works, see Offboarding in the Learn section.

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Share your feedback

You’ve now completed testing the full lifecycle of transactions on Ark—we’re excited to see what applications you come up with! Let us know if there’s any more guides you’d like to see, and please share any feedback on the developer experience.