Private network

Setting up a private network using Geth is relatively easy and straightforward. Geth allows you to operate on multiple chains, although not at the same time. It does so by allowing different genesis block to be inserted in to the database. The only thing you need to do when switching between chains is give up the path to the genesis block file (in a later version of Geth a hash will suffice when it has previously been imported).

To set up and import a new genesis block please fetch an example genesis block. You are free to add any accounts to this block by inserting it within the alloc object:

"alloc": {
    "0xaddress": { "balance": "amount denoted in Wei" }
}

Now start Geth with the genesis flag pointing to the genesis file geth --genesis /path/to/file. This will import and set the canonical genesis block for your chain or switches to a different previous imports chain.