Knocking Things Off My To Do List For Year End: Claimed my EOS!

It has been a busy year and I typically work on a long list of to do I have this time of year to start the coming year with less things to handle. One of the items on the list I have that has been bothering me for some time has been how to put my EOS tokens to work in a secure and user friendly way. If you recall, EOS was the year-long ICO that took place from June 2017-2018 that ultimately ended in converting the ERC-20 tokens into their own new blockchain. I was also interested in EOS for a number of reasons as they seemed to have a great approach to distributing their ownership as well as some interesting technology behind their blockchain. Given that the biggest challenge for blockchain in 2017 was scaling, I thought that the approach EOS would offer would be attractive for those developers looking to build on a scalable and reliable platform. Therefore, although I could not participate in the ICO, I took a portion of my profits and allocated some into the EOS ERC-20 token.

As June approached, I struggled to find easy ways to register the tokens to ensure my place on the genesis block of the new blockchain. However, in the end I was able to move the tokens to a wallet which allowed me to register them through the Ethereum protocol and the EOS website. It was a very intimidating process as I am not a technical person when it comes to seeing code on a computer screen. However, the community here on #STEEM had a number of great resources that shared tutorials on how to go through the registration process. That process provide me with the public and private keys I would need to have my EOS tokens once the Mainnet was up and running. Crazy to think that EOS ran up to over $20 right before the launch but we live and we learn: “buy the rumor and sell the news.”

Unfortunately, I felt that there were not many user-friendly interfaces early on to claim the tokens to a wallet. I searched many alternatives here and on the web but did not find one that help me with my concerns of security given my paranoid approach to cryptocurrencies and the web in general. I remember seeing that Scatter was the overwhelming choice of many but never felt great about inputing my private keys anywhere for a long period of time. I also started to see fake Chrome extensions and targeted phishing scams that just turned me away from even trying to claiming them early on. It was unfortunate as one of the key responsibilities for a EOS tokenholder is to vote for Block Producers much like our votes here for Witnesses. As I continued to learn the importance of Witnesses here on #STEEM I forced myself to look at options to get involved and claim my EOS tokens to vote for Block Producers; particularly given the governance issues they had been having early on as only a small portion of tokenholders were staking to vote.

I decided to wait it out until a Hardware Wallet option was available. A couple of months ago, I saw that a Block Producer put up a bounty to get a wallet with hardware wallet support. Once I saw that it was up and running, I decided to get back into researching the process. I continued to run into issues as there was not one single tutorial to get me through the process of claiming from the original genesis block to moving into the Hardware Wallet. Instead, I figured out a way of using two separate wallets to finally get to a spot I feel comfortable with. I will briefly share the process I went through here in case you are one that has been waiting for a similar explanation.

I started by feeling comfortable with the wallet I would ultimately use to hold the tokens so went over to the Fairy Wallet Github Site to download the correct version of the software to run on my computer. I also used their Wiki Page for detailed guides on how to not only download and setup the applications but also how to execute transactions as well. Once I downloaded the application, I also downloaded the Ledger Hardware Wallet application on the device. Once installed, it will request you connect to the EOS Mainnet using one of the endpoints listed. This will now allow you to go through an account creation process which would provide you the keys necessary to manage it going forward. Once you get the keys generated, you will be able to choose an account name and when you finish paying for the account (various payment options available, including fiat) you will have full access to the EOS account under that name. As stated on the guide, this is an optional solution to create an account as other are available. Your account is now ready to receive EOS tokens from any source in order to transact with the blockchain.

I then went over to the EOS RIO Website where they have a wallet called SimplEOS which you can download for free. They are a Block Producer and have done a great job with their interface with the protocol with this wallet. It was also one of the simple processes I found in order to claim your tokens from the original swap from ERC-20. Once you download the application, you can do a quick check of your balance by inputing the public key provided when the ERC-20 tokens were first registered. This is what provided me some comfort in the process before I continued. It is then a quick and simple five step process. First, you will need to select Import Existing Key.

Next, you will be asked to enter the EOS private key provided from the registration (Step 1). Step 2 will be for you to decide the password for the application going forward. As usual, you should ensure that this is a strong password in case you lose your computer you will reduce the risk of losing the cryptocurrency held in the wallet. Step 3 is agreeing to accept the EOS Constitution which is an issue I will not go into details now but is a different approach in governing the blockchain. Step 4 is optional but adds an additional layer of security as you can enter a PIN to provide security in case the application goes inactive for a short period of time. Once these steps are completed, you will see the Dashboard with the detail of the EOS you hold.

This seemed like a great wallet as it was user-friendly and provided great tools like History and the ability to vote for Block Producers. However, I wanted to move my EOS tokens to my Hardware wallet so I immediately unstaked my tokens and waited 72 hours before sending them over to the new account created using my Hardware Wallet. Of course, I sent a couple of tokens over first to ensure everything was setup right before sending the bulk of the balance. I did run into some bandwidth issues as it did not allow me to send all of my tokens to the new wallet for some reason. I am not well versed on the implications of CPU and RAM but after doing some high level research, I staked a couple tokens again on the SimplEOS wallet before sending the tokens over without any issues at that point. I also saw the long list of Airdrops received over time just for having the tokens which was interesting to see. Since I liked the interface from SimplEOS, I decided to leave a small balance there staked along side the Airdrops tokens as well.

Once I finally had my EOS tokens on my new account and Hardware Wallet, I immediately went through the process of staking the tokens then voting for Block Producers. This was one of the main reasons why I have been wanting to finally control my tokens as I believe that in any community, it is important to have our voice heard for the future of development and progress. In EOS, this is achieved by voting for those that have demonstrated the capability as well as the knowledge to help build and govern the protocol. Since most of my learnings around EOS has been from my experience here on #STEEM, I have often looked for users to help my experience and understanding of EOS. One of those users is Hive account@lukestokes which also represents a Block Producer, Hive account@eosdac. While I typically do not like to proxy my vote out, I knew that Hive account@eosdac was on the top of my list to vote for given their interesting approach to governing through a decentralized model. I have continued to read their blog posts and it demonstrates the caliber of talent they have and how I believe future organizations will be run in a more decentralized world. I also wanted to vote for other like Rio and New York which have also been in the forefront of creating for the ecosystem. Given that blockchains are transparent in providing data, I searched Hive account@lukestokes votes for Block Producers here and saw that he had those that I wanted as well. Therefore, I copied his votes for the others I had open with the exception of two that I could not find.

It has been an interesting process to finally get setup within the EOS ecosystem. I continue to learn about the blockchain technology everytime I endeavor in learning these processes which is great as I think that many of our day to day processes will be governed by a blockchain in the future. While it has been challenging to be a stakeholder in any blockchain project this year, I think I have seen enough to know that the technology is not going away and continues to develop at an accelerated rate given the amount of capital that continues to flow into the space. The potential of disruption from these projects is enormous and when consider how early adopters are still currently is encouraging. I continue to look forward to seeing where this project leads to in the development of blockchain technology in general.