SOFT CLAIM: How to use your WAX account with Anchor instead of WAX Cloud Wallet

7 min readSep 10, 2023

My Cloud Wallet is a really convenient way to manage your WAX account: you can use it to sell and buy NFTs on markets (like AtomicHub, NFTHive, NeftyBlocks, vIRL), to transfer your waxP and other tokens to other accounts, to stake waxP and also to vote for guilds and proxies. All this without having to deal with the very long passwords (or rather, “keys”) that are present in every blockchain — and the WAX blockchain is no different.

This is possible because My Cloud Wallet is one of the so-called “custodial wallets”: it stores your keys without you ever having even seen them, and you can interact with the WAX blockchain as you would use a normal app!

However in some situations this may not be optimal. The WAX blockchain offers so many possibilities, and not all of them are accessible using My Cloud Wallet. Also on some occasions it may be a little slow in processing transactions. What’s the solution? Perform a so-called “soft claim” with Anchor! You will be able to:

use the same address as before (for example abcde.wam) — your friends will know who you are!
have access to all your old NFTs, all your waxP and all your Cloud Wallet resources
still use your Cloud Wallet (you can use both!)
allow your friends to use your address, but only for the actions you want (such as voting, staking, accessing particular applications, …)
connect a Ledger hardware wallet for even greater security
muuuuch more!

Are you interested? Well, let’s get started!

REQUIREMENTS

an active Cloud Wallet account. These accounts end in “.wam”, for example “abc.d.wam”. This account must have already been used at least once to make a transaction. Your Cloud Wallet account is always accessible from this site
Anchor installed on your device. There are many guides online, but in the end you will just need to download Anchor and install it. No need to activate an account on Anchor because as mentioned we will use your Cloud Wallet!

A brief introduction: public keys and private keys

As we said before you are about to gain full control of your WAX account, so you will need some keys. Keys always come in pairs: one is called “the public key”, the other is “the private key”.

your public key is like your home address: you can give it to whoever you want without fear of anything happening. Your public key will be visible to everyone on the blockchain: this is absolutely normal! You can share it with whoever you want, both trusted people and malicious people (they won’t be able to do anything)!
the private key is the exact opposite: you must NEVER GIVE IT TO ANYONE, and possibly keep it offline in a safe place (saving it on your desktop with the name “MySecretKey.txt” is not a good idea). The private key is like the key to your house… actually it’s even worse, because your home address is also written on it! If a person knows your private key they will be able to steal EVERYTHING in your account (NFTs, waxP, tokens… everything) forever.

These keys are very long combinations of numbers and letters that are generated according to precise algorithms. Remember that each public key is closely linked to its private key: together they form a “key pair”. We will use Anchor to generate TWO of these pairs, so you will have 2 public keys and the corresponding 2 private keys. Just one couple would be enough, we will make two to have greater flexibility: one couple will be the “dominant couple” (this couple is called “owner key”), i.e. the one who will command the account, while the other couple will have less powers (called “active key”)

STEP 1 — Use Anchor to create your own keys

Open your Anchor

if you are using a newly installed Anchor, you will be presented with the account creation/import screen. Close it: go to Anchor Settings -> Interface Options -> Advanced User Options. Then select ‘Display advanced options.’

Ok, after you managed to close it click on “Tools” on the left menu and then click on “Manage keys”

In the next window, click on “Generate Key Pairs”

In the next window, again, press “Generate Key Pairs (x2)”

Anchor will (finally) generate TWO key pairs for you. As you can see, it will hide the private keys with asterisks! Click on “Copy to clipboard”

Now you can close this window pushing the “X” on the upper right corner. Anchor will ask you if you’re sure, because it hasn’t saved them yet: calmly click on “OK”

On your pc open Notepad or any other word processing program, and press CTRL+V (or “paste”): you will see your two pairs of keys just generated by Anchor appear

For now you can save this text file, but at the end of the procedure I recommend deleting it. As mentioned, it is best NOT to have these keys saved on your computer. I advise you to print them (now!) so you will always have a paper backup. For now keep the file open and continue reading!

STEP 2 — Make a “soft claim” on your Cloud Wallet

As mentioned, the method I am illustrating will allow you to access your account both using Anchor and your Cloud Wallet: this method is called “soft claim”. There is also another method that completely excludes your Cloud Wallet and will allow you to only use Anchor, called “hard claim”: in this guide we will not deal with this.

Okay, now open your Cloud Wallet claiming page: go to https://www.mycloudwallet.com/setting/account-claim and then click on “SOFT CLAIM”

In the BOX 1 insert one of your PUBLIC KEY, in the BOX 2 the other PUBLIC KEY. Check the BOX 3 and then confirm!

A popup will appear asking you for a code sent via email and your 2FA (if enabled); fill the boxes and confirm the transaction. Then this message should appear:

Click on “DONE” and if everything went well, returning to the claim account page you will see this screen:

STEP 3 — Set up Anchor to manage your WAX account

It’s time to configure Anchor to access and manage your WAX account! Open Anchor, click on “Wallet” in the left menu then click the small arrow in box 2 and finally on “manage wallets”

Now click on “Import Account”

Now click on “Import an existing account”

Now click on “Import Private Key”

We’re almost done! Now we will need to copy and past one of the two PRIVATE KEYS into box 1, then check the box 2 and confirm. As you can see Anchor has already recognized your account, because the address of your Cloud Wallet appears in box 2!

Perfect! Repeat these steps and also import the second PRIVATE KEY. Go to “Wallet”, then “Manage wallets” and make sure you select the “active” key, not the “owner” key… nothing bad would happen, but the owner key should be used as little as possible!

Now your private keys are saved in Anchor: if you haven’t already done so, create a backup paper copy of the text file we used earlier containing the two pairs of keys (either using a printer or writing everything by hand) and then delete it forever from your computer… better safe than sorry, as they say. You are now ready to manage your account using Anchor!

See you on the blockchain…

di0nix

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