An Introduction to HPB Wallet
The wallets commonly used in our lives (Alipay, WeChat Pay, bank cards, etc.) are issued by centralized organizations to manage our assets. If our passwords were lost, we could retrieve them through relevant means of certification. Similarly, blockchain exchanges (bibBox, Huobi.pro, OKEx etc) are also centralized. The only difference is they manage our private keys. Though it’s very convenient and efficient to use these exchanges, it is not recommended that one keep a large value of digital assets in them for long for they are easy targets for hackers. That is why we need a decentralized wallet and HPB Wallet is just what we need.
Blockchain wallets generally concern these terms: public key, private key, mnemonic, keystore, password.
A 42-character hash string starting with 0x will be generated once the blockchain wallet is complete. This hash string is the address of the wallet.
The private key is a plain text one, composed of 64 characters. Each wallet only corresponds to one private key and the key cannot be altered. Whoever owns the key has control over the wallet (without having to access the original password). Therefore, private key should be backed up immediately after the wallet is created and stored and preserved with special care.
Private keys are normally hard to memorize and inconvenient to use. That is why mnemonics are invented: to simplify the process of maintaining security. Mnemonics are plain text private keys in another form, with the same function as private keys. When importing blockchain wallets, one needs only to type in the relevant mnemonic and set up a password (not the original password) to have control over the wallet. It is therefore concluded that mnemonics are equally important as plain text private keys.
Keystore is encrypted private keys and is closely related to blockchain wallet password. When the password is changed, keystore will change accordingly and the original password will be needed when importing the wallet using keystore.
There is still a great deal of uncertainty as to whether regulation will be introduced into digital asset exchanges in the future. What’s worse is that people don’t actually own the digital assets they deposit in those exchanges. They just transfer the assets to accounts designated by the exchanges and these assets are thereafter managed by the exchanges. It is totally possible that exchanges use their assets for short-term arbitrage. Still worse, due to lack of supervision, it is theoretically possible for exchanges to flee with the money or become easy targets for hackers.
As mentioned earlier, the growing number of security issues with exchanges have made everyone aware of the importance of using decentralized wallets. By the phrase “decentralized wallet” is meant that the process of creating the wallet is completed locally, and the wallet service provider does not save the clients’ private key. As a result, clients won’t be faced with such situation where exchanges get attacked and all assets are lost. The security level of one’s wallet has a lot to do with his/her private key. Therefore, here to remind everyone, if you use a decentralized wallet, do not take a screenshot of the private key on your cell phone, or send it through email, instant messaging, etc., or store it on cloud servers such as a cloud disk. It is highly recommended that you store your private key offline. Writing it down on a piece of paper and keeping it in a safe place might be the best way.
A HPB Wallet is a decentralized wallet, used to store HPB assets. Now, HPB wallets provide users with such functionalities as account creation and importing, HPB assets storing and transferring, transaction record query, mapping, voting and a lot more.
One can can view his current HPB assets as well as collection and transfer records on the home page of his HPB wallet.
HPB Wallet provides users with the ability to manage multiple wallets. Users can create multiple wallets or import wallets.
HPB Wallet provides a convenient way to move Ethereum's HPB and gives users the right to vote for high-performance nodes in his mind.
Based on high-performance HPB backbone, transfers on HPB Wallet can be recognized within a second, which is quite a breakthrough for the industry. HPB Wallet brings greater convenience into trading.
Now that we are clear on the basic concepts, the next article will be focused on how to develop a wallet on the HPB main web.