Many readers don't realize the added value IOV's Human Readable Address is bringing to the system.
Wrong-address transaction errors are a common occurrence since cryptocurrency addresses are represented by a long string of letters and numbers. If users don’t recheck the details several times while typing in their address, it is quite possible that all of the tokens of a user will be sent to the wrong recipient.
“One of the main problems facing mass adoption of cryptocurrency usage is the difficult nature of making token transactions. When it comes to actual end-users, blockchain platforms have failed to solve the user experience problem around wallet addresses in particular. For example, an issue that happens quite often during crypto transactions is known as, ‘wrong-address transaction errors,’” said Isabella Dell, Founder and CTO of IOV (Internet of Value).
A quiz was conducted by BlockCAT to check the level of anxiety cryptocurrency users had when sending crypto transactions. Results displayed that 94% of respondents worry about making a mistake when sending cryptocurrencies and 11% have actually sent crypto to the wrong address.
With the influx of newcomers in the cryptocurrency industry, wrong-address transaction errors are becoming more common as they attempt to make cryptocurrency transactions across different networks. Some exchanges are making money off it by charging large recovery fees from these users, or not even offering the option to recover tokens sent to the wrong addresses.
For example, CoinExchange.io charges 10% of the transaction amount for Ether (ETH) sent to an ERC-20 token address. There is a 0.5 ETH recovery fee for ERC-20 tokens sent to the wrong address. Depending on the price of Ether, a wrong Ether token transaction could cost someone heavily. Other exchanges, such as HitBTC, have a policy that erroneously sent transactions will not be refunded at all.
IOV has come up with a blockchain name service (BNS) application, to solve the problem of wrong address transaction errors. This application is a DNS-like system for blockchains. This is the first global decentralized blockchain address registry. One of the main advantages of BNS is that it allows a user to transform their public key and register a human-readable value address.
“When you think of a blockchain address now, you think of a line filled with numbers and letters. While that’s useful, it’s really hard for non-technical people to understand what that means. In order to encourage mass adoption of cryptocurrencies, we are looking to create a blockchain name service where people can register their names on a blockchain”, said Isabella.
A traditional blockchain address would look something like:
17Rts7fvY9Co2kja4DirzAbFX57j858yfx
An address like this would be hard to remember and prone to errors when making transactions. Alternatively, a human-readable address would look something like:
isabella*iov.value
… which is much more convenient to read and share.