# First Steps with Verus

You've installed Verus — now let's get it running. This guide covers starting the daemon, syncing the blockchain, and basic configuration.

The Verus daemon (verusd) is the core software that connects to the network and maintains your copy of the blockchain.

# From your verus-cli directory — FIRST TIME (uses bootstrap for fast sync)
./verusd -bootstrap

On first launch, verusd will automatically:

1. Create the data directory (~/.komodo/VRSC/ on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/Komodo/VRSC/ on macOS, %AppData%\Komodo\VRSC\ on Windows)
2. Generate a default VRSC.conf with random RPC credentials
3. Download a bootstrap snapshot and sync the blockchain

⚠️ You do NOT need to manually create the data directory or config file — verusd creates them automatically on first run.

💡 Why -bootstrap? Without it, first-time sync can take ~3 days. With -bootstrap, you'll be synced in under 3 hours.

For testnet, use:

./verusd -testnet -bootstrap

Your node needs to download the entire blockchain before it's fully operational. Check progress with:

./verus getinfo

Key fields to watch:

When blocks equals longestchain, your node is fully synchronized.

For more detailed info:

./verus getblockchaininfo

This shows chain name, difficulty, verification progress, and consensus parameters.

Always use -bootstrap for your first sync. For subsequent starts after a clean shutdown with verus stop, use -fastload instead (see below).

The configuration file controls how your node operates. It's located at:

• Linux: ~/.komodo/VRSC/VRSC.conf
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Komodo/VRSC/VRSC.conf
• Windows: %AppData%\Komodo\VRSC\VRSC.conf

A default config is created on first launch. Key settings:

# RPC credentials (auto-generated, keep secret)
rpcuser=your_random_username
rpcpassword=your_random_password

# RPC port (default: 27486)
rpcport=27486

# P2P port (default: 27485)
port=27485

# Optional: add specific peers
addnode=seeds.verus.io

# Optional: enable mining or staking
# mint=1           # Enable staking
# gen=1            # Enable mining
# genproclimit=2   # Number of mining threads

🔒 Security: Your rpcuser and rpcpassword control access to your node. Never share them. The defaults are random strings, which is good — leave them as-is unless you have a reason to change them.

After editing VRSC.conf, restart the daemon for changes to take effect.

Always shut down gracefully:

# Mainnet
./verus stop

# Testnet
./verus -testnet stop

This tells the daemon to finish what it's doing, save state, and exit cleanly. Do not kill the process (kill -9, closing the terminal, etc.) — this can corrupt the blockchain database.

You can verify it stopped by checking:

./verus getinfo
# Should show: error: couldn't connect to server

If you shut down properly with verus stop, you can restart much faster using -fastload:

# Mainnet
./verusd -fastload

# Testnet
./verusd -testnet -fastload

The -fastload flag skips full chain verification since the shutdown was clean. Only use -bootstrap for first-time sync or if your data is corrupted.

• Wallet Setup — Create addresses and manage your VRSC
• Key Concepts — Understand VerusID, staking, and more
• Troubleshooting: Sync Issues — If you're having trouble syncing