The EOS token freeze occurred over one month ago, and although the EOS mainnet is now live and people are able to send and receive their mainnet assets, this is still not possible in Exodus. We are hesitant to recommend a definitive solution for claiming your EOS from Exodus because of the complexity of how EOS works and some key security factors.
Will Exodus Give Me A Way To Claim EOS Mainnet Assets Safely?
We are currently working on an EOS mainnet solution that is secure and does not require you to expose your EOS or ETH private key. This is to prioritize the safety of your assets over everything else. We do not have a timeline for when this feature will be implemented in Exodus as we must first test to make sure it works perfectly. We are also working to make the feature as intuitive to use as the one-click EOS registration feature.
The EOS Mainnet Is Complex
The challenge of implementing a dedicated EOS mainnet wallet in Exodus is that EOS functions unlike any other assets we currently support. In addition to your EOS address, EOS also has account names with unique private keys for you to keep track of with different capabilities for each. Additionally, EOS is held and transacted with RAM, something separate from EOS which can be purchased and is also tied to your account. EOS can also be staked or unstaked and arrives in your wallet fully staked when you first claim it. EOS deposits to exchange addresses will also require address memos.
None of these factors will prevent people from creating wallets which support EOS, the fine people over at EOS Rio have managed to make all the above features feel intuitive. However, Exodus will not add an asset unless it works exactly the same as every other asset in the wallet. We've worked hard to make sure no matter how different two assets may work under the hood, your experience with both assets is almost the same in Exodus.
If we cannot get an asset to work perfectly in Exodus, we would rather not add it than give you an incomplete or imperfect experience. EOS is no exception, and we don't feel comfortable putting a dedicated wallet into your hands until we are able to mold EOS mainnet to our standards of design and function.
Security
Until we support a formal EOS mainnet solution from Exodus, the only way to claim your assets will involve exporting your EOS mainnet private keys to your desktop. We cannot stress enough the security risks of exporting your private keys, and for most people we truly do not recommend ever doing this unless it is absolutely necessary.
It is also important to remember EOS mainnet and the tools that you use to interact with it are only about one month old. While we do not doubt that many of the EOS wallets on the market today have been coded meticulously with love and care, we feel that 40 days is not enough time for a piece of software to deemed safe. This is why we encourage all customers to take a "wait and see" approach at the moment if this is possible for them; we do not want to see any of our customers lose funds because they claimed their EOS in a buggy or insecure application.
Fallback
The security of Fallback registration is something we want to highlight specifically. Fallback registration is the process of creating an EOS mainnet private key using your ETH private key. Our concern with generating a Fallback key is it is possible to reverse engineer your ETH private key from it. If your EOS private key were ever exposed, your Ethereum and ERC20 tokens would also be compromised.
We advise anyone planning to generate a Fallback key using their Ethereum private key to consider:
- Moving all funds off of their Exodus wallet first.
- Generating the Fallback key.
- Deleting their now empty Exodus wallet and creating a new one.
- Moving all of their funds onto the new Exodus wallet.
This way your ETH and ERC20 tokens are protected in case your EOS private key is ever compromised.
How Should I Access My EOS Assets?
Ultimately, we want you to access your EOS mainnet assets in the way which seems right to you. More than likely, your risk tolerance in exporting your private keys will depend on how eager you are to claim your EOS mainnet assets, and we want you to choose with our support.
If you would like more information or assistance with EOS mainnet, please write to us in our support inbox and one of us will be happy to help!
Please reserve the comments section for lively and honest discussion about the article! If you have technical issues with Exodus, our Community Support team will be happy to speedily assist you if you send a descriptive email to: support@exodus.io
This post first appeared on Steemit as an exclusive article but was also reblogged on the Exodus Movement Medium page. We give the <3 to our fellow Steemians first and foremost, but this article may appear elsewhere after its initial publication.