Some of you may have noticed a new RHT token appearing in your NEO Tracker address page. Here's an example:
The RHT is a NEP5 token, an token that runs on the NEO blockchain. If you are familiar with Ethereum, you can think of a NEP5 token as the Neo equivalent of an Ethereum ERC20 token.
ERC20 token has become incredibly popular in 2017 as they were largely adopted for ICOs. An example of ERC20 tokens are OmiseGO (OMG) and Binance Coin (BNB).
So what is exactly RHT?
RHT it's a HashPuppies token, issued by the HashPuppies project. You can find more information about the project in the website, and they also have a Twitter account and a Reddit channel.
According to the information on their website, the token will be redeemable at some point in April, when their platform will launch.
How do I qualify for an RHT token?
Instead of going for an ICO, the project distributed an initial set of tokens via an Airdrop. This is another common Ethereum practice, for example OmiseGO distributed 5% of their token to ETH holders back in September.
However, only certain NEO addresses qualified for the Airdrop. As posted on their blog:
Addresses qualifying for the airdrop are those that sent or received NEO (not GAS or other assets/tokens) during the time period of December 8, 2017 00:00:00 UTC through December 24, 2017 23:59:59 UTC and had a final balance of between 1 and 99 NEO at the last block before December 25, 2017 00:00:00 UTC. These dates/times correspond to the range of blocks starting with block 1677683 and ending with block 1739381.
The number of addresses we have calculated in that time-frame that qualify according to the rules above is 46,023, and Redeemable HashPuppy Tokens will be distributed to those addresses between December 25, 2017 and Jan 1, 2018. We are reserving 13,977 tokens for additional community and team rewards, for a total circulation of 60,000 tokens.
Long story short, you qualified only if you performed at least one NEO transaction between Dec 8-24, and you had a balance between 1 and 99 NEO before Dec 25. If that's the case, then you should have received an RHT token.
How do I check the balance?
RHT tokens are currently only visible on NEO Tracker. If you are using a different explorer, or a wallet such as Neon, then you will have to wait for the wallet to be updated to recognize RHT tokens. At the time being, Neon recognizes DBC, RPX and QLC tokens only, in addition to GAS and NEO.
Don't keep your assets in Exchanges
It's important to remember that trading at exchanges will likely not qualify you to receive any token as result of Airdrops, unless the exchange will distribute them. So far, very few exchanges happen to distribute tokens as a results of Airdrops, distributions or forks. One notable exception is Binance: this exchange is a popular choice for NEO traders as it's the only exchange that currently distributes NEO GAS, as well offers NEO and GAS widthdraw with no fees.
However, you should never use exchanges for storing your tokens. Besides all the various security implications, another good reason is because only if you use your own wallet you will have full control and you will be able to benefit from these airdops (that in some cases may result into some free coins, consequently free money).
The current choice of NEO wallets is quite limited compared to other coins.
- A good simple but friendly software wallet is Neon.
- For enhanced security, you can/should consider an hardware wallet. The top choices today are Trezor and the Ledger Nano S. Currently only the Ledger Nano S supports NEO.
Keeping your NEO tokens in a private wallet will allow you to:
- Freely manage the tokens
- Claim GAS
- Participate in Airdrops
However, be careful to not expose your private key, or your wallet may be compromise and you may loose all your tokens. Hardware wallets generally provide a better protection over software wallets by reducing the risk of exposing the private key.