Tube is a bi-directional service that allows our users to swap the IoTeX mainnet native token to the IoTeX Network ERC20 token, or vice versa.
Basically you send certain amount of token (ERC20 or native) to a special smart contract, and you'll receive the other type of token in equal amount.
Before using the service let's first introduce some basic facts of the IoTeX address.
An IoTeX address is inherently associated with an underlying ETH address. You can use our ioctl commandline tool to check the associated ETH address of an IoTeX address, or vice versa. If you are a first-time user of IoTeX, refer to How to install ioctl
ioctl account ethaddr io14s0vgnj0pjnazu4hsqlksdk7slah9vcfscn9ks
it shows that that underlying ETH address is 0xAc1ec44E4f0ca7D172B7803f6836De87Fb72b309
io14s0vgnj0pjnazu4hsqlksdk7slah9vcfscn9ks - 0xAc1ec44E4f0ca7D172B7803f6836De87Fb72b309
Or use the ETH address as input:
ioctl account ethaddr 0xAc1ec44E4f0ca7D172B7803f6836De87Fb72b309
You will see the same output showing the mapping of these 2 addresses.
These 2 addresses are an alias to each other. They share the same private key, this same private key gives you full access/control of the IOTX ERC20 and native token on these 2 addresses.
When you swap token using Metamask, or our web wallet, you are operating the same private key so everything is fine.
Now here's the caveat: in most wallet software when you generate address from the seed phrase, the address of the IOTX native token is NOT same as the IoTeX ERC20 token, i.e., there are 2 different private keys behind these 2!
In other words, when you swap tokens in your wallet and expect to receive the other type of token in the same wallet, you will need to specify a correct receiving address.
Knowing this distinction is extremely important for correctly operating your swap and prevent loss of token!