Accounts and wallets on Lumia
Who this is for: developers about to set up a wallet for Lumia, who want the model in their head before following a click-by-click guide.
Prerequisites: none. Read this before Add Lumia to MetaMask or Add Lumia to FoxWallet.
What you need to know
The account model is standard EVM. A Lumia address is an externally-owned account (EOA): the same key pair, the same address format, and the same signing scheme as Ethereum. Any EVM-compatible wallet can hold a Lumia account; nothing about the address itself is Lumia-specific. If you already have an Ethereum wallet, you already have a Lumia-compatible account. You just need to point that wallet at Lumia's network values.
Supported wallets. This section documents MetaMask and FoxWallet step by step. Any wallet that supports adding a custom EVM network (wallet_addEthereumChain or an equivalent manual-add flow) works the same way in principle. You're adding the same network fields regardless of which wallet's menus you're clicking through.
Testnet vs. mainnet accounts are the same account, different network. Your address doesn't change between Lumia mainnet and Beam testnet. Only which network your wallet is currently pointed at, and which funds are visible, changes. This is exactly why it matters to check which chain ID your wallet shows before you sign or send anything: the same private key controls a mainnet balance and a Beam testnet balance that have nothing to do with each other.
Never reuse a mainnet key for testnet work, or vice versa. Not because the chains are technically linked, but because keeping them separate means a testnet mistake (a leaked key in a public repo, a compromised dev machine) never touches real funds.
Steps
1. Decide which network you need first
Most development starts on Beam testnet. See Networks & RPC setup if you're not sure which one applies to you.
3. Follow that wallet's setup guide
Add the network and confirm the chain ID it shows against /reference/networks.
4. Fund the account
Testnet tokens from the faucet for Beam, or your own funds for mainnet.
Verify it worked
Your wallet shows a nonzero balance on the network you intended, and the chain ID displayed matches the value in /reference/networks, not the retired 1952959480 network (see /reference/retired-testnet).
Troubleshooting
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