Installation & Set Up

Installation

Download the Upfire Desktop Application from the Upfire website. The application is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS operating systems.

Wallet Setup

Before you can start seeding and downloading files, your Upfire wallet should be set up. A wallet is necessary in order to earn UPR whenever your files are downloaded and decrypted by others. To set up a wallet, navigate to the “Wallet & Earning” tab in the application. Look for the wallet icon on the left of the application (second from the bottom).

From here, you have the option of adding an existing BSC wallet or creating a new one.

Create a new wallet

Click on “Create a new wallet”. When prompted, enter a secure password for your wallet. This password will be used to encrypt your wallet, and Upfire does not save this password. As a result, be sure you remember or write down your wallet password in a secure location. Your funds can only be accessed with both your wallet file and password.

Once your wallet has been created, save your wallet file to your computer and be sure to back up the file. This wallet will store any UPR or BNB you use within the Upfire application, and the file (along with your password) is required in order to restore your funds from backup in the future.

Use an existing wallet

If you would like to import an existing wallet, you will need access to that wallet’s private key or wallet file (.json). If you load your wallet from a private key, you will be asked to enter a secure password in order to encrypt your wallet and generate a secure wallet file for use within the application. Once again, be sure to store your wallet file and password in a safe place.

If you want to load an external wallet file (ends with .json) into the application, you can do so by selecting the "Use wallet file" option. Wallets from sites such as Metamask and others can be imported here. Simply load your wallet file in, enter the password, and the application will load your wallet and show your existing funds.

Funding your wallet

Funding your wallet is not required in order to use the application, seed files, or earn UPR. However, it can be beneficial to have both UPR and BNB in your wallet so that you are able to decrypt files if you want to do so.

Because Upfire as a BSC-based decentralized application, transactions on the blockchain require a small amount of BNB to be used as “gas”. Add a minimum of 0.05 BNB to ensure your transactions can be processed. In reality, the application uses far less than that per transaction, and you should be able to perform a large number transactions using a relatively small amount of BNB.

Transferring funds onto your wallet can be done by clicking on the “Copy Public Key” icon to the right of your wallet address within the Wallet tab. This will copy your address to your computer’s clipboard. You can then paste this address into another wallet where you store UPR or BNB, and send it to this address.

Once you have deposited funds into your wallet, you will need to send them to the smart contract for use within the application. Your "Smart Contract Balance" is used when you decrypt files within the application in order to access them, among other activities. To add UPR to the smart contract, click “Replenish funds” under the Smart Contract Balance area in the Wallets tab. Please allow a few seconds to minutes for the transaction to be completed on the blockchain. Once you have a UPR balance in the smart contract, you can decrypt files from others and access their contents.

Creating a UPR File

UPR files are the BitTorrent equivalent of a ".torrent" file. You share Upfire files, ending with ".upr", with other users so that they can download, seed, and decrypt your files. Click “Upload file” on the top right. From here you will see the screen shown below:

On this page, enter all the required information. Next, set a price in UPR. This is the price downloaders of the file will have to pay in UPR to decrypt and access the file.

The next field, “Save to”, asks for where on your computer you would like the newly created UPR file stored. It’s best to create a single folder for all of your UPR files for easy searching later.

The final field asks for a description. In a sentence or two go into a little more detail about what the contents of the file contains.

Press "Add Files" to add one or multiple files to the application to convert them into an Upfire file that you can share with others. Pressing "Start Uploading" will start the process of creating your Upfire file.

Important: The application creates two files when you generate an Upfire file - a .upr file, and a .enc file. The .enc file is required for seeding and MUST STAY IN THE SAME FOLDER that it was generated in, in order for seeding to function properly and ensure your decryption key is accessible. If you move the .enc file to another folder, others may not be able to download or decrypt your file at all.

Downloading a UPR File

To download a file in the application, you must first get a desired .upr file from another user. To find files available for download, consult the Upfire community in the Telegram, Discord, or another Upfire community. There are many community-driven sites where one can find Upfire files to seed and download.

Once you find a file you’d like to download, download it to your computer. Next, open the Upfire app and click on the second tab from the top, “Downloads”.

Click on the red “Start Download” button and you will be prompted to select the .upr file from your computer.

From here, click the plus sign on the top right to select where on your computer you would like the new files downloaded. Press "Start downloading" in order to download the file. When the download completes, the file will move to the "Completed downloads" tab in the application (third icon from the top).

Seeding a UPR File and Earning UPR

Once you’ve downloaded a file in the downloads tab or uploaded your own, you automatically begin seeding the file. You can press the pause button a file to pause seeding (cease new connections) at any time. Removing the file permanently ceases all connections and removes the file completely from your application.

You will begin to earn UPR once another user downloads and then decrypts any file you are seeding (see the next section "Payments" to learn more about how UPR payouts work).

If you would like to upload and reseed a file at a different price, follow the steps outlined in the “Creating a UPR file” section of this guide. Enter your new price. Be aware that changing the file price or any other data related to it will cause the ecosystem to treat this file as a new file, making you ineligible to earn from the downloaders of the original file. You will also have to share this newly created file on your own. As a result, it is often best to just seed the existing file by downloading it in the "Downloads" tab of your application so you can benefit from existing seeders and distribution of the original file.

Earnings and Payout Protocol

Using Upfire, users can earn UPR tokens by seeding files that are actively downloaded and decrypted by other users in the network. Downloading a file to seed is free, but in order to access its contents the file must be decrypted. Decrypting a file requires UPR, in an amount set by the original seeder of a file. UPR used to decrypt a file is paid out to all seeders of a file in the following manner:

If a file has one seeder - the original file uploader/seeder, that seeder receives 100% of the UPR from file decryptions.

If a file has multiple seeders, payouts are more complex. The original seeder of a file is always entitled to 50% of the UPR from download/decryptions, and will receive this payout regardless of whether or not they are online during downloading/decrypting.

All other seeders of a file split the remaining 50% of the UPR from decryption. There are two types of seeders: those who have decrypted the file themselves (paid), and those who have not (free). Paid seeders receive 3x the amount of UPR from file decryptions compared with free seeders. As a result, a file with 3 seeders - the original seeder, 1 paid, and 1 free, that costs 10 UPR, will have a payout that looks like this:

Original Seeder: 5 UPR

Paid Seeder: 3.75 UPR

Free Seeder: 1.25 UPR

As a result, if you plan to seed a file long-term, it makes sense to decrypt a file and become a paid seeder in order to continue supporting the network and maximize your earnings. As a bonus, you will also gain access to the content itself.

When you earn UPR from seeding, it will credited to the smart contract section of your application. If you would like to send the UPR from the smart contract to your wallet, you can click the withdrawal button.

Backing up and Restoring your Dapp

Backing up your wallet, files and configuration

If you are seeding several files, it is a good idea to backup your dapp to protect against sudden data loss. If your dapp becomes corrupted or you lose access to your computer for any reason, you can easily restore your dapp (along with any files you are seeding and your wallet) to a previous configuration by creating a backup with the following steps:

First, navigate to the following folder:

Windows: c:\Users[YourUsername]\AppData\Roaming\Upfire
MacOS: /Users/[YourUsername]/Library/Application Support/Upfire/ Linux: ~/.config/Upfire/

In terminal, you can do this by using the cd (change directory) command, such as: cd /Users/[YourUsername]/Library/Application\ Support/Upfire/ ...being sure to modify the above path based on your OS.

You are now in the main Upfire folder. This folder contains several important files:

• wallet.json is your wallet file

• torrents.json contains all the information about the .upr files in your application, including files you've uploaded, downloaded, and seeded. This file provides your Upfire application with important information regarding the state of your files. Deleting this file will reset your Upfire application and remove all files in it.

• Files beginning with "torrent-" and ending with ".upr" represent the files you are seeding in your application. You will have one file in this folder for each file in your Upfire application. Each of these .upr files, along with torrents.json, is needed in order to backup/restore your app's file configuration or transfer your file configuration to another computer.

Copy the desired files to your designated location for backup. To be safe, you can copy the entire Upfire folder. The shell command to copy the folder to your Desktop is (while you are currently in the Upfire folder) is:

cp -R ../Upfire ~/Desktop/ where ~/Desktop is the path where you want to drop the contents of the Upfire folder. Using the above command while inside the Upfire folder will copy the contents to your Desktop. You should create separate folders for your backups and consider labeling them by date.

Restoring to an earlier backup

Restoring to an earlier configuration/backup simply requires swapping out the Upfire folder (see the above section for the path based on your OS). You must have made a manual backup (see the section above) in order to restore your dapp to an earlier configuration. If you just want to restore your file configuration - all files you have uploaded, downloaded, and seeded - you can swap out the torrents.json file and the files ending in .ufr with the versions of those files you have saved in your backup folder.

When swapping out files in the Upfire folder, make sure you Upfire application is closed. Be sure you have backed up your torrents.json file and all .upr files in the Upfire folder to an external location BEFORE DELETING THEM and swapping them with any backups. If you lose torrents.json or any of the .upr files, you will not have access to some or all of the files you have uploaded, downloaded, or seeded in your Upfire application.

Troubleshooting & Error Messages

Common Issues

Cannot reopen the app after closing it

When the application is closed, it remains running in the background on the system tray by default. This setting can be changed in the "Settings" tab. This is enabled so users can actively seed without having the Upfire app open on their desktop.

To open the app on your screen look for the Upfire icon in your tray. The location of this depends on your operating system. On a Mac it can be found on the top of the screen to the left of the battery icon. On Windows, this can be found in the tray on the bottom right of the toolbar.

Error Messages

Key to decrypt the file(s) cannot be found. Please try again later.

This message is displayed to users trying to decrypt a file if no seeders are currently available to seed the file, if the only seeders with the file have moved their .enc file to an incorrect folder, or if they no seeder online has the decryption key (only "free" seeders are online). If you are seeing this message when you try to decrypt a file, you should try again later when a paid seeder or the original seeder is more likely to be online or request that other users with the key in the community go online to seed the file.

Other Issues and Questions

If you are having other issues with the application or have a question, feel free to use the "Contact Us" form below and we will respond to you shortly.