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This step-by-step tutorial will get you started with bark, our Ark wallet client that can be used from the command line or integrated into apps. Currently, bark only supports signet, a bitcoin testnet. Ark is still in alpha, and we don’t want anyone losing any real sats!

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Installing Bark

Your wallet is called bark and has two installation methods:

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Binary release

Binary releases can be downloaded from GitLab. Below are instructions to download the binary, mark it as executable, and add it to your PATH on different platforms.
1

Download Bark

curl -L https://gitlab.com/ark-bitcoin/bark/-/releases/{version.release_tag}/downloads/bark-{version.bark}-linux-x86_64 --output bark
2

Mark the binary as executable

chmod +x bark
3

Add Bark to your PATH

sudo cp bark /usr/local/bin/

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Verify installation

Verify you have the correct version installed: 
bark --version
You should see: bark {version.bark}
Seeing an older version?If you see a different version number, you likely have an older bark installation from previous testing. This happens due to PATH conflicts where your system finds the old binary before the new one.To fix this, find where the old binary is located:
which bark
Then remove the outdated binary:
sudo rm $(which bark)
After removing the old version, verify the installation again with bark --version.

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Compile from source

1

Clone the repository

The first step is to get the code which you can clone from the repository.
git clone https://gitlab.com/ark-bitcoin/bark
cd bark
2

Install Rust

You will also need a Rust compiler. The rustup website offers installation instructions for almost any platform.
3

Install dependencies and build

Additional dependencies can be downloaded using your package manager.
apt update
apt install build-essential clang protobuf-compiler
4

Verify installation

Run bark --version to verify that the installation completed successfully.