【Blockchain Knowledge】A Guide to Cryptocurrency Wallets for Newbies

foreword

I didn't want to write it.. But there are too many people around to ask, it is troublesome enough to re-interpret one by one (I was complaining at the beginning)...

In addition, if you want to hold an airdrop event in the future, you still have to teach the novice how to create your own wallet, so that you can get it...

Therefore, this article will lead you to own your first hot wallet from scratch. We will start by understanding what a cryptocurrency wallet is, and gradually discuss some information security issues in depth, and then create a wallet and implement it step by step. Friends who are watching or preparing to join the currency circle, get to know and help a little more.

If you have checked some wallet apps before, you may find that the comments below often say that the wallet is not safe, and the assets have not been moved in it. The money has disappeared by itself, and I suspect that the wallet is not safe, but in fact It is absolutely impossible for a decent wallet to transfer your assets out. In such cases, it is usually because you accidentally leak the private key or open permissions that should not be opened, resulting in the loss of assets, so any operation must be done. Be careful, because this technology is still in its early stages and the only one who can protect you is yourself.

What is a cryptocurrency wallet

Modern people must have digital wallets! For example, even if a bank's Taiwan dollar account is a digital wallet, this wallet can store our digitized assets, and can also transfer funds in and out. The cryptocurrency wallet is also a similar concept. The transfer of funds is different from traditional digital wallets. Funds are constructed on the ledger of the blockchain, and there is no bank or organization behind it to help control our funds.

In general digital accounts, there are centralized institutions such as banks to assist us in managing assets. Therefore, if you encounter a loss of funds caused by fraud or transfer operation errors, if you quickly call customer service, you will still have the opportunity to recover the funds, or even ask The bank first helps to freeze the money in the account; and the so-called digital wallet built on the blockchain, the meaning behind it is decentralization, and there is no centralized organization to assist in managing assets. The advantage of this is that you suddenly remit hundreds of millions of Taiwan dollars. When cryptocurrencies go out, no one will control you or stop you, and funds are less likely to be traced, but the relative risk is that once fraud or operational mistakes are made, these losses cannot be retroactive, because the blockchain has the characteristics of immutability. .

Talking about hot wallet and cold wallet

The difference between a hot wallet and a cold wallet is definitely not as simple as two wallets, one in the refrigerator and the other in the oven. Here are the characteristics of each.

Hot wallet: refers to a wallet that operates on Internet-connected devices such as computers, mobile phones, and tablets, allowing users to quickly view and trade cryptocurrencies. This convenience also gives hackers the opportunity to steal the encryption in hot wallets by some means. assets.

Cold wallets: Cold wallets are usually devices that look like flash drives. They are usually offline and not connected to the Internet. They are only connected to the Internet when there is a transaction demand, and the chance of being attacked by hackers is greatly reduced.

Centralized exchange wallet: Refers to the wallet in any exchange, such as Binance, FTX, Coinbase, MAX, ACE...all of them, you will find that when you opened an account, these platforms did not tell you the wallet The private key or mnemonic is because they are unified for the user to keep it, so if the exchange runs away or is attacked by hackers one day, there is a greater risk of directly causing catastrophic loss of user assets. , but we can enjoy the services provided by centralized exchanges at low cost, such as trading, lending, leverage, pledge, etc.

Based on the above, in terms of security comparison: cold wallet > hot wallet > centralized exchange wallet, the convenience is the other way around: centralized exchange wallet > hot wallet > cold wallet, so how to compare convenience and security The choice is up to the user to weigh.

What is the wallet address

The literal translation of the wallet address is the house address of your wallet on the blockchain. Others can find you only through the address. The so-called "house number" arrangement on different blockchains will be different. Just like the addresses in Taiwan and the United States are completely different, let's take a look at the appearance of wallets in several different blockchains:

Ethereum: 0xBd88cEde5673CF......C98d61F4B084590260924
Solana: 8wEnkDFv5bqP1K6KeQ...Hm3XukkqMiFaHal1Ne4tX
Polkadot: 14e6Lc6UVeVN9fH274vP...LkQx1e9BE8TWAdSzDbAer7
Cosmos: cosmos15v50ympd65nn73......u8adpl8d3ujv2e74, Atom memo: 103......520

Different blockchains, the length and arrangement of wallet addresses are very different. Although most wallet applications now have services that integrate different chains in order to gain more users, different blockchains still It will be a different wallet address. This feeling is more like opening a bank account. In addition to the basic Taiwan dollar account, you can also open additional foreign currency accounts and online banking accounts. Although they are all my accounts, these sub-accounts operate independently. of.

However, there are also special cases. For example, the wallet addresses of chains such as Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Polygon, Arbitrum, and Optimism all look the same, and the same set of private keys can also access different chains. Why?

Because Ethereum is the earliest mainstream blockchain that can attach smart contracts on it, many people who want to build their own blockchain will directly use the original code to change and release it, or build an Ethereum expansion plan (L2) , This result makes these different blockchains compatible "in address", and one address can dominate the world. It is also possible to lose money overnight.

What is the private key mnemonic?

Since the foundation of the blockchain world is constructed from a lot of cryptographic theories, we will call the currency issued on it "cryptocurrency", and the basis of wallets and wallet addresses is also passwords.

When creating a new wallet, the wallet application will directly paste your private key to you. The private key may usually appear in two forms, one is a general private key, which may look like this "8769afe490cfcac009caabcce3b13730826460f57..." A string of things that look like garbled characters are actually a hash code with a total of 64 digits in hexadecimal.

The other is Backup Phrase, which is another form of private key. Its purpose is to help users memorize or record complex private keys and reduce errors when copying private keys. The mnemonic is generally composed of 12, 15, 18, and 21 words, which may look like this "alpha beta gamma delta epsilon zeta eta theta iota kappa lambda mu", but these words are all from the fixed vocabulary, generated The order before and after is also obtained according to a certain algorithm, so don't worry about entering 12 words randomly and an address will be generated.

Be careful not to take screenshots or photos of mnemonics or private keys and store them in the cloud! ! ! The information security issue here is no longer traditional information security, but also asset security! In the past, hackers attacked us to lose at most personal information or our own privacy, but in the decentralized world, the direct loss also includes money and digital assets (such as NFT).

We must download many apps on our mobile phones. As long as the apps that can help you take photos, upload photos, or analyze photos, they all have permission to read the album. Since they have permission, they can secretly read them at any time. It is not difficult to take all your photos and find a screenshot of the private key; if it is stored in the cloud, in fact, the commonly used Google Drive or Dropbox will not encrypt the files we upload normally; send Email to yourself It may be because we intentionally or unintentionally opened the e-mail permission to an App, exposing the private key to danger. Once someone finds your wallet private key, they can steal all the assets in your wallet anytime, anywhere.

A better storage method may be to write it on paper and something that you can think of that can be kept away from the Internet, or if you really want to put it on the Internet, then split the private key and mnemonic into pieces. They are placed in different network resources, which can greatly reduce the chance of private key exposure.

Create a wallet on your computer | MetaMask

MetaMask can be installed on three platforms: iOS, Android and Google Chrome, but it is more commonly used on the Chrome browser, so here I will demonstrate how to install the MetaMask plugin on Chrome. The download URL is https://metamask.io/ download/ .

After clicking "Install MetaMask for Chrome", it will jump to the Chrome online application store, click "Add to Chrome" on the upper right side to install the wallet, and then create the wallet.

After adding extensions, there is a puzzle button on the right side of the browser, and you can quickly see the extensions we have added in Chrome when you click it.

Clicking the pushpin button will allow MetaMask to be pinned to Chrome, and it will be very convenient to use it directly in the future.

Then the next step is to create your own wallet. If you are using a cryptocurrency wallet for the first time, or you want to change to a new wallet, click Create wallet; if you want to use the previous hot wallet, you can Click Import into wallet, and then enter the private key/mnemonic phrase.

You need to set a password for quick login first, which is a bit like when you go to the bank to apply for an ATM card, and then you need to directly enter this password to transfer money or check the balance in the local machine, without entering the mnemonic every time.

After the establishment is the main event, click on the gray block at the bottom left to display 12 words, which is the mnemonic of the wallet. If you want to switch to a different device in the future, you will rely on it to restore the wallet. Once the mnemonic is forgotten Or if the leak is known to others, there will be loss of assets, and no one can help you, and no customer service can save it, so it is recommended that when building a wallet, you can write the mnemonic phrase on paper, or write it in any safe place. place.

Then there will be a test, just fill in the mnemonics you just recorded in order.

At this point, the establishment of the wallet is completed. In the future, you only need to click the icon of the little fox on Chrome to use it.

How MetaMask copies wallet addresses

If we want to ask someone to transfer encrypted assets to you, we will need to provide the address of our own wallet. How to copy the address of the wallet in MetaMask?

As long as you click the block with the red frame, the computer will automatically copy the wallet address to the clipboard, and Ctrl+V can paste your wallet address to the other party~

Create a wallet inside your phone | Trust wallet

There are a lot of options on mobile phones. In addition to Trust, wallets such as imToken, Coinbase wallet, Blocto, etc. can do their homework and research before deciding whether to use them or not.

Trust wallet is the mobile wallet app of the world's largest Binance exchange . First, go to the mobile app store to check Trust and find an app with a blue shield on a white background. If you are afraid of downloading a fake one, you can check if the developer is not DApps Platform Inc, and whether the number of downloads has exceeded tens of millions.

After downloading, you will start to create your own wallet. If you are using a cryptocurrency wallet for the first time, or you want to change to a new wallet, click Create Wallet; if you want to use the previous hot wallet, you can click Select Import into wallet, and then enter the private key/mnemonic phrase.

After clicking to create a new wallet, it will ask you to enter a six-digit initialization password. In the future, this password will be used to quickly log in to the hot wallet. This password is only applicable to this device, not your wallet private key/mnemonic! Similar to when you go to the bank to apply for an ATM card, if you want to transfer money or check the balance on this device in the future, just enter this password directly, instead of entering the mnemonic every time.

Next, you will see a mnemonic composed of 12 English words. This is the mnemonic of the wallet. If you want to switch to a different device in the future, you will have to rely on it to restore the wallet. Once the mnemonic is forgotten or leaked by others Knowing that there will be asset loss, and no one can help you, and no customer service can save it, so it is recommended that when building a wallet, you can write the mnemonic phrase on paper, or write it in any place that can ensure safety.

After you write it down, there will be a test for mnemonic phrases. Click and pass in order to successfully create a wallet!

How Trust wallet copies wallet addresses

If you want to ask someone to transfer encrypted assets to you, we will need to provide the address of our own wallet. How to copy the address of the wallet in Trust? Click Receive first.

Then tap the cryptocurrency you want to receive.

Click to enter the page inside, copy in the lower left corner and it will go to the clipboard, paste it in the general chat input box, you can paste your wallet address to the other party~

Epilogue

This article explains what are cryptocurrency wallets, hot wallets and cold wallets, wallet addresses and wallet private keys, and shows the creation of MetaMask and Trust wallets. If you are a novice and have never used wallets, you want to claim my airdrop soon. If you have any problems in establishing a wallet, please leave a message and let me know. When you are familiar with the operation, you can consider adding encrypted assets. The most important thing is what to do. Everything has to be DYOR.

Easter eggs

Since we spent four articles last month writing about how to issue our own cryptocurrency, there is a little easter egg here as a commemoration after the end. If there is no accident, I will post another article next week, the main theme is that I released it on Polygon My own technology coins (IT Coin, ITC) will be rewarded by airdrop ITC coins at that time. At present, the plan will distribute airdrop quotas in my FB fan club, Line community and Telegram group respectively. The airdrop quota is limited and the first to win, For detailed information, please continue to pay attention to future articles, so welcome to join or follow the following three platforms first to grasp first-hand information:

FB fan link: ITechNote technology essay
Line Community: Tech Essays Off-Site Rest Area
Telegram group: ITechNote technology essay exchange community

(During the Chinese New Year, you can go to the Line and Telegram groups to receive the Fortune Coin. This coin is issued by me and will not have any effect in the future. It is regarded as a blessing to everyone during the New Year! Happy New Year everyone!)

Finally, thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to read my articles. If you still like these content, I hope to get your follow-up and support. You are also welcome to click this link to find me on other platforms .

See you next time o((>ω< ))o~

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