A Guide to the NEON Wallet
The NEON Wallet was made by Ethan Fast and CoZ Devs. Thank you to all of them for this phenomenal wallet!
In this guide, I will be explaining the following:
How to make a NEON wallet
How to make a NEON wallet
As I mentioned before that I want to help you to download the best Neo wallet so I want to describe each kind of wallet. And my other wallet is a mobile wallet which supports both Android and iOS devices. Light wallet for the NEO blockchain. Contribute to CityOfZion/neon-wallet development by creating an account on GitHub.
How to put your funds into the wallet
How to claim gas
How to send funds from the NEON wallet
If you find this guide useful, please consider tipping a small amount to AFu5zvPCNZbX8bd7nRt3kUBrHorsNXo4cU
**Gas only please, no one should send a full Neo, I will send it right back if you do
How to Make a NEON Wallet for your NEO:
We’re going to start off by learning how to transfer Neo to a wallet.
1) First you’ll want to download the client, I highly recommend the NEON wallet as it is simple and very easy to use. It can be found here. https://github.com/CityOfZion/neon-wallet/releases
1) First you’ll want to download the client, I highly recommend the NEON wallet as it is simple and very easy to use. It can be found here. https://github.com/CityOfZion/neon-wallet/releases
It will be the only wallet covered in this guide for now.
Once you download the client, go ahead and install it just like you would any other computer application.
Open the application!
This will be the screen you see when you open the client.
2) If you have a previous Neo Wallet (perhaps from a web wallet, or the old AntShares wallets) simply input your WIF/Private Key to log in. All your Antshares and AntCoins will have been automatically converted to Neo and Gas, respectively.
If this is your first wallet for Neo, click on New Wallet.
***This is a demo wallet only, there are no funds in here, please do not send anything to this account.
3) You will come across a screen that looks like this. COPY BOTH YOUR PUBLIC ADDRESS AND PRIVATE KEY TO A SAFE LOCATION. If you lose this private key, you lose access to your funds.
4) Once you have copied these two strings of characters down somewhere safe, click Back to Login.
5) Now, enter the private key you just copied down into the text box and click Login. Your private key is your WIF.
You may send funds to the address above if you wish :)
This is your wallet! On the right hand side, you will see a list of transactions. On the left hand side, you will see your NEO and GAS holding, the USD value of your wallet, your NEO address, and more.
How to move funds into the wallet:
You made a wallet, but how do you get your Neo into it?
In order to move funds to the Neo wallet, copy your public Neo Address from your wallet, and use it on an exchange holding your Neo as the withdrawal address!
**Remember to withdraw whole numbers. On Bittrex there is a 0.1 Neo fee, so withdraw a whole number plus 0.1. Example: Withdraw 40.1, not 40.5 as you will lose the additional 0.4
Once a transaction is sent, give it a minute (literally one minute, Neo blockchain is very fast) and check your wallet for your funds!
If the transaction was sent, but not showing on your wallet, double check it was sent to the correct addresses and is on the blockchain usinghttps://neoscan.herokuapp.com/
Congrats! Your funds are now safe as long as you don’t plaster your Private Key around the internet or your computer gets keylogged. If you want the most secure wallet, copy the Private Key to a word document, print it off immediately, then delete the word document from your computer without saving it. The paper copy is your only access to the Private Key making it extremely secure.
How to Claim Gas:
Well, you now have successfully put your Neo into a wallet. Now what?
Over time you will see gas building up in the wallet in the green button that says ‘Claim X Gas’. To claim the gas, simply press the button.
The process is NOT instant.
The gas didn't immediately transfer to your total?!?!
Do not worry, there is a process going on that takes a little to complete before the gas is claimed.
Your wallet, as soon as you hit the button, sent your Neo to your account.
Why does it do that? Well, gas is unclaimable until a user sends their Neo to themselves. It is just how the process works. Once the Neo is sent back to yourself, the gas becomes claimable, and the program will complete the process. For this reason, you will see transactions on the right hand side for 0 Neo. This is all normal!
How Do I Send Neo Out From My Wallet?
Click on the giant green Send button in your wallet.
You will see two text inputs pop up.
In the first box, copy the address you wish the Neo to end up in. This can be an exchange address, another person’s address, etc. Just make sure that the address you put in is a Neo address. If you accidentally put an Ether or Bitcoin address, you may lose your Neo permanently.
In the second input box, enter the Amount of Neo you wish to send.
After both boxes are complete, hit Send Asset.
If you wish to send Gas, simply click on the Neo button to toggle it to Gas. It will look like this.
Fill out the boxes just like you would for Neo, and send the asset!
Once you are done using the wallet, please log off using the button in the upper right hand corner!
THANK YOU!
Once again, if you found this guide useful, please consider tipping a small amount to AFu5zvPCNZbX8bd7nRt3kUBrHorsNXo4cU
**Gas only, no one should send a full Neo, I will send it right back if you do
From exchanges to wallets to NEP-5 tokens
In a previous article, I extolled the many benefits of NEO as an alternative to Ethereum. As of this writing, Ethereum has a market cap that is 16 times greater than NEO ($110 billion vs. $6.6 billion). Another upstart “smart contract” blockchain project, Cardano, has not even fully launched, but has a market cap of $26 billion, nearly 4 times that of NEO.
If you think NEO represents a great value, forge ahead and learn more about how to acquire and maintain it.
Create a NEO Wallet
The first step is to create a NEO wallet that you will control. The best NEO wallet is NEON, which was created by City of Zeon, independent NEO developers. Go to that site, download and install the wallet for your particular computer operating system (Mac, Windows, or Linux).
If you are on a Mac, after you download the software, you will get a warning about the app being from an “untrusted developer”. You can trust them. :) After downloading, go to your System Preferences > Security Tab and click the box to allow opening the app.
Once you open the application, you will see this main menu:
Choose the “Create a new wallet” option and then you will see this screen:
Set a unique passphrase that will be used to encrypt your wallet’s private key. Click on the “Generate keys” button.
You’ll then see this page:
It’s very important that you save everything printed on this page. It is all of the information associated with your wallet and if you lose it you will not be able to access/recover your wallet. The “Public Address” is the address you will share with others when you want to send or receive payments. Never share your Passphrase, Encrypted Key, or Private Key information with others, however. Thus, keep this info in a very safe place. If you lose it, you may not be able to access your wallet in the future.
Give your wallet a name and then “Save Account”.
When you are done saving/printing, click on the “Back” button to return to the main menu. In the future, you will access you wallet from this menu.
Now, let’s actually get some NEO to put in our new wallet…
Acquiring NEO
You’ll need to acquire NEO via a cryptocurrency exchange. However, the most popular and easiest to use exchange, Coinbase, only supports four cryptocurrencies currently, and NEO is not one of them.
What this means is that you will need to have some crypto (preferably Bitcoin or Ethereum) in order to acquire NEO coins.
If you have no crypto currently, I suggest registering an account at Coinbase first to purchase some Bitcoin or Ethereum. Purchase however much you intend to invest in NEO, since you will be using that Bitcoin/Ethereum to purchase your NEO on another exchange. I wrote another article about how to purchase crypto for the first time, that may help you in this regard. (If you use that as a reference, just stop after Step 1 and return back to this article.)
You can see a list of all exchanges a particular cryptocurecy is listed on via the CoinMarketCap.com site. On that site, search for NEO and then click on the Markets tab on its summary page so see all of the exchanges that currently support NEO, as shown below.
If you are a crypto veteran, look for an exchange you know and trust and use that to purchase your NEO coins. I recommend Binance. It currently has the largest market for NEO, and it has some of the lowest transaction fees in the business. Other good exchange options: Bittrex and Kucoin. I won’t go into the nuances of purchasing from an exchange, because the process varies for each one; it involves depositing (transferring) Bitcoin or Ethereum to your exchange account, and then using that to purchase NEO, at the current market rate.
However, if you are not experienced with these exchanges, a far simpler way to acquire NEO is to use Shapeshift.io.
Shapeshift is a middleman that allows you to exchange one crypto for another, without having to register with an exchange. In general, your net exchange rate will be a little worse going through Shapeshift (compared to going directly to an exchange), but not appreciably, and it is a convenient service that can make a lot of sense, especially if you just want a very quick conversion. (A similar service, called Changelly, is also worth looking at in general, but they do not currently support NEO, so we can rule them out for this exercise.)
Let’s walk through the Shapeshift experience.
When you go to Shapeshift.io, you’ll see this:
You’ll want to choose the deposit currency that you will use to pay for your NEO. We’ll assume Ethereum in our example. Choose NEO as the “Receive” currency and then press “Continue”.
On the next screen, you’ll be asked to provide the address of the Ethereum wallet where you currently have your Ethereum, as well as the address for the NEO wallet you created earlier (use the Public Address for your wallet).
The trickiest thing about this screen is that you must provide the amount of NEO that you want to receive, which will then calculate how much Ethereum you need to send. If you enter an Ethereum amount first, you will receive an error. They handle it this way because NEO is not available in fractions (unlike most other cryptocurrency). Thus, you can only purchase whole number increments of NEO.
After you “Start Transaction”, you’ll be taken to a screen like this:
On this screen, you are given instructions about where to send your Ethereum. You’ll want to go to your Ethereum Wallet and and send the amount of Ethereum listed on the page to the address listed.
Here’s an example “Send” screen for MyEtherWallet:
Once you send your ETH, Shapeshift will basically work to exchange your ETH for NEO (by getting the best price available from the various exchanges it partners with). You can track the status of the process on your Shapeshift page.
Once completed, you will see your newly purchased NEO sitting in your NEON wallet!
You’ll notice that there are two currencies listed- NEO and GAS. Below them, a “Claim” button with a GAS value is visible.
One of the cool things about NEO is that all holders receive recurring dividends, paid in GAS. You will be constantly earning more GAS, with the exact amount depending on your NEO balance (the more NEO you have, the more GAS you earn). You can learn more this on the excellent NeoToGas.com site. You can see what the expected dividend payout will be for your NEO balance, and learn more about the GAS dividend in general.
You should periodically hit the “Claim” button to have your earned GAS apply to your wallet. It will not show up in your GAS balance until you claim it. You are under no time constraint to claim it though, so don’t worry about losing your unclaimed GAS if it’s been awhile since you last claimed. I try to claim once per week, myself, but you may want to do it more or less often.
Of note… if you keep your NEO on an exchange, you probably will not earn any GAS dividends (current exception: Binance), so it’s always advisable to move your NEO to your NEON wallet as soon as possible.
That’s it… we’ve purchased some NEO and have it safely stored in our NEON wallet, earning GAS on a recurring basis.
NEO vs. GAS
So what is the difference between NEO and GAS and why does NEO have two different currencies?
NEO is designed to represent “ownership” of the network. An excellent blog post by Blockknight summarizes some of the differences, but the key takeaway is that NEO conveys voting rights, while NEO is an operational currency.
GAS is more than just a dividend you receive for owning NEO. It actually has a major utility. It is used to pay certain fees on the NEO network. Amazingly, there are no transaction fees for NEO (though it is possible that that may change in the future); however, there are defined system fees for which GAS is required. These system fees are for smart contract related functions.
Compare this to Ethereum (and nearly every other cryptocurrency), which charges a fee for each transaction.
One other important note: NEO coins can not be divided. There are no partial NEO coins (that means you will only have whole number values for your NEO coins in your wallet). GAS, on the other hand can be divided. Keep this in mind when dealing with exchanges, who will display NEO in fractional units (for trading purposes). If you try to withdraw 5.95 NEO from an exchange, you’ll only realize 5.0 in your wallet. Thus, try to get your totals as close to a whole number as possible, without going under, when working with an exchange, especially when withdrawing.
NEP-5 Tokens
Nearly every ICO project over the past couple of years has been conducted on the Ethereum platform, using Ethereum’s ERC-20 standard.
But NEO now also supports tokens on its platform, via its own NEP-5 standard. These are early days for NEO-based token projects, but there have already been a couple of very successful ones — Red Pulse and DeepBrain Chain.
While I expect the number of token projects developed on NEO to increase quite a bit, it is doubtful we will ever see the same numbers as Ethereum for one very simple reason… NEO actually charges a fee to launch a new token on its platform, and it’s not chump change. The fee is currently 500 GAS (or around US$25,000).
By having a substantial fee, the barrier to entry for creating a new token project is obviously much higher than with Ethereum. This also should lead to higher quality projects on NEO, compared to NEO, on average… or, at the very least, fewer low quality projects. :)
You can store NEP-5 Tokens in your NEON wallet, as well. If you acquire a NEP-5 token, you can just send/deposit it in your existing NEON NEO wallet. Any tokens you have on your account, will appear below your NEO and GAS balances, like so:
In the example above, you can see that DBC (Deepbrain Chain) and RPX (Red Pulse) token balances are clearly visible on the main wallet balance page.
Sending and Receiving NEO
You can easily send and receive NEO and GAS (and NEP-5 tokens) from your NEON wallet.
To send, click on the “Send” button, enter the amount you wish to send, the type of asset (NEO, GAS, or a NEP-5 token you own) and the NEO address of the recipient.
Again, unlike other cryptocurrencies, you will not have to worry about transaction fees. There are none (at least for now… subject to change in the future).
To receive NEO, GAS, or a NEP-5 token from someone, click on your “Receive” button and copy your Public NEO Address and give that to the person/entity that is wishing to pay you.
You’ll find that most transactions are processed quite quickly.
Tracking NEO Transactions
If you’ve used other cryptocurrencies, you’re probably familiar with blockchain explorers that allow you to search for transactions on the network.
You can do the same thing with NEO via NEOTracker.io. Search by public address or by specific transaction.
This is a great way to see the status of a recent transaction or to verify activity in your own wallet.
Hardware Wallet
Finally, a recent development is that Ledger, the outstanding hardware wallet, now supports NEO, GAS, and NEP-5 Tokens. You can set up a Ledger wallet to connect via NEON, giving you all of NEON’s features plus the added security of a hardware wallet, a physical device that must be used to confirm all transactions.
Summary
As you can see, getting set up with NEO, GAS, and NEP-5 tokens is quite simple. The NEON wallet is easy to set up and use and can handle all NEO asset types… and now you can even secure your account using a Ledger device. More and more exchanges are supporting NEO and if you are intimidated by exchanges in general, Shapeshift makes it very easy to covert to NEO from most other major cryptocurrencies.
When you own NEO, you automatically earn GAS (so long as you control your wallet or you are using a NEO friendly exchange, like Binance), which is a great dividend to accrue and is visible/accessible in your NEON wallet at all times.
NEP-5 tokens will become more commonplace and will likely become part of your portfolio as you involve yourself more in the NEO environment and they are now easily managed using NEON, as well.
Best of all, currently you do not have to worry about paying transaction fees when you send NEO, a huge advantage over other cryptocurrencies.
Of course, please do your own due diligence before investing in NEO yourself. This article should not be construed as investment advice; rather, it is my attempt to help those of you that have already decided you want to take the plunge with NEO.
Please consider supporting the new project I am working on, Narrative. Our goal with Narrative is to create the world’s first true content economy, giving users autonomy over the content on the network. 85% of all revenue generated by the Narrative Network is returned to its members.
Narrative White Paper: https://assets.narrative.network/documents/narrative-network.pdf
Narrative Token Sale: https://tokensale.narrative.network