This guide is for people who just bought EOS and are not sure what to do next.
Hopefully this will provide enough guidance to encourage you to take your first steps into this amazing community and ecosystem.
" How does EOS work? "
EOS is a blockchain that can be compared to a decentralized computer, where users can change their EOS tokens into CPU, NET and RAM resources.
These provide your account with the necessary computation in order to send transactions on the blockchain. Your resources recycle on an ongoing basis over a 24h period.
Users have the option to power-up their account for 24h, this however does have a cost associated depending on how many resources you need, because any EOS used to power-up will be permanently spent.
Unless you will be performing a lot of transactions, this is not usually recommended as there are wallets that can provide you with some free transactions everyday, which should be enough to cover your usual activity.
" I’ve just bought EOS on an exchange, what now? "
First thing you should know is that exchanges are custodial wallets, which means they control your private keys.If anything happens to the exchange, your wallet will most likely also be affected.
It is always recommended that you take ownership of your private keys, but I know the thought can be daunting as losing your keys usually means losing your tokens.
In this post we will go over the basics surrounding EOS and provide you with some tools that will allow you to better secure your assets through the use of a permission based account system.
" Are there any other benefits for taking my EOS tokens out of the exchange wallet? "
EOS rewards users for voting on block producers, so if you wish to be rewarded you must take part in the voting process. This means moving your EOS to a non-custodial wallet , staking them to REX* and then casting your vote through any of the online portals such as bloks.io or eosauthority.com.
" Voting? block producers? "
EOS uses a system called Delegated proof of stake, which is a real-time voting system to decide who produces the next block. Block producer candidates provide EOS with the necessary infrastructure and keep the chain going. They rotate every 500ms based upon the amount of votes they receive and are rewarded daily EOS payouts.
The voting process protects against any bad actors and provides well behaving block producers with the necessary support to remain in rotation. EOS users can vote either directly for block producers or they can vote for proxy accounts, which are other community representatives who will vote on block producers for you.
As mentioned, in order to be able to vote, EOS users will first have to move their EOS tokens to a non-custodial wallet and stake the amount they wish to vote with to REX* (unstaking takes 3 days).
Each user can vote for up to a maximum of 30 block producers.
Please note that only users who vote for either a minimum of 21 block producers, or a proxy account, will meet the criteria to receive REX rewards.
" What’s REX…? "
REX is the EOS Resource Exchange. After you stake your EOS to REX you will be given a symbolic amount REX Tokens, these are non-tradeable tokens that represent a certain amount of staked EOS and pay the user interest fees if they meet the criteria mentioned previously.
The interest fees are based on several revenue streams:
- RAM buy/sell: A fee attached to sales of RAM.
- Premium Name: A continuous auction of short names.
- PowerUp: Users pay the system to rent CPU/NET for 24 hours.
" Sounds good, but how do I start? "
For this part we will be using the Anchor wallet and the EosX web interface.
Download the latest version of Anchor and install it. Once installed go to the tools option and select Key Management.
Because EOS uses a permission based system, it is always recommended to generate 2 different key pairs, one will be your owner key and the other will act as your active key.
-
Owners keys are the highest permission keys for your account. They allow you to modify any other keys you have and grant total control over the account. It is recommended to store your owner key offline, and only use it as a recovery key should your active key ever be compromised.
-
Active keys are a secondary permission key for your account, these are to be used for your day to day activities and can be configured to allow for further restrictions. Active keys do not have permission to change the owner key but can change any other key including itself.
" I’ve generated my 2 keypairs, now what? "
Once you’ve securely saved your keypairs, go to the EosX website and at the top select the wallet and then click on create account.
-
Select the option “Create account via exchange withdrawal or help from others”.
-
Choose a username and paste your public EOS owner key (The one that begins with either “EOS” or “PUB_K1”).
Example:
→ Once you fill in the details and click continue you will be asked to send a small amount of EOS to their signup account (signupeoseos), along with the memo of the details of your account.
Example:
- Log into your exchange account and transfer the correct amount of EOS to the signup account with your memo attached.
→ After a few minutes your account will be created by the signup tool.
-
Type in your account name in the search bar at the top and it should return a result if the account has been succesfully been created.
-
You can now import the private owner key to Anchor.
→ Once you have the owner account paired with Anchor:
- Go back to the EosX website to log in, now back to the wallet tab and select permissions, then paste your ***public active key (starts with “EOS” or “PUB_K1” ), into the active field and click continue to attach it to your account.
→ Once the transaction goes through:
- Check your permissions tab again to see if the active key was successfully paired. If so, import it to Anchor, if not you can just try again.
→ Once the active key has been paired, you can now remove the owner account from Anchor.
It is recommended that you always sign transactions with your active account, and only ever use your owner account if you have to change your active keys.
Now that you have your account set up, you can vote for block producers or a proxy account and automatically start collecting rewards.
As a final note I would like to insist that you please make a habit of checking the transaction information everytime you sign or transact on the blockchain.
Some contracts can be malicious and not even a secure permission system can completely protect us from bad intentions. Active keys protect us from having our keys stolen, but do not protect us from having our tokens stolen.
There are more advanced permissions that you can configure, but for most users this will be enough as long as you check whatever transactions you’re signing.
Wondering what else you can do on EOS?
Have a look at this directory for a list of useful links!
Hope this was helpful and I will likely update this every few days for formatting and to further simplify if needed.
Please let me know if you find any inaccuracies and feel free to share, and as always, all suggestions are welcome!