Keep Your Private Keys Offline in Rainbow App
The first Digital Wallet For IRISnet, Rainbow App, is open for public on 7th, Feb, 2019! And on June 21, 2019, it has been updated to Rainbow 2.0, which supports both IRISnet and Cosmos.
Now it’s available on IRISnet Official Website, Google Play and App Store.
We’ve often heard the sad story about the loss of crypto-currency due to the private key of digital wallet being stolen. Even you write down the mnemonics and keep it secretly, it's still hard to avoid your digital assets being stolen.
This is because people may not know how dangerous internet is. So many incidents can result in the loss of private keys, i.e., hack attacking, system crash, phishing, etc.. A well kept mnemonics can help you to recover the private key, but it is useless for finding the lost digital property back.
What is the best way to protect our crypto-currency? The answer is to use an offline cold wallet and an online watch wallet together. Cold wallet, an offline digital wallet, is used to store your crypto-currency. And the watch wallet, an online wallet without private key, is used for conducting the transactions authorized by the cold wallet. Now, let’s create a cold and watch wallet in Rainbow App.
Something You Must Know
- You need two mobile phones that are not rooted. Please download the latest Rainbow App from official website, Google Play or App Store.
- Enable the Flight Model in one phone. Turn off all physical network interfaces, including Wi-Fi, wireless, bluetooth, even infrared if you have. Then install the Rainbow app and create a wallet staying offline. This will be your cold wallet, which is not link to the internet.
- Then install the Rainbow App on another phone, and create a watch wallet. The watch wallet should be authorized by a cold wallet. Rainbow simplify this process with scanning the QR code from each other.
- Watch wallet is usually for daily use, i.e, check the balance and query the transactions. But watch wallet can only conduct the transferring, delegating, undelegating, redelegating and withdrawing transactions after being authorized by a cold wallet. The cold wallet without internet access is very safe to save your assets.
- Rainbow App supports to manage many wallets. Therefore an online phone can host both watch wallet and hot wallet for pocket money; and cold wallet is only hosted by an offline phone which aims to protect the big assets by not connecting to the internet.
How to Use It
Create a Cold Wallet
- A cold wallet is just a digital wallet without internet access. Run the installation package of Rainbow App on an offline mobile phone, then create or import a wallet.
- Although a hot wallet could become a cold one once offline, we still strongly advice users to create or import a wallet after your phone goes offline. Disconnecting from the internet is the only way to keep the private key safe. Create a Watch Wallet.
Create a Watch Wallet
- For the first time to install the Rainbow App: Click the button [Create a Cold Wallet] on the main page, and follow the wizard step by step.
- Or add a watch wallet in the Rainbow App in which some wallets have been created. Two ways as below:
Click [Switch] on the assets page, then select [Watch Wallet];
Or click [Me] at the bottom, then select [Manage Wallet] → [Watch Wallet].
- Input wallet’s name and address to be watched in the watch wallet, then a QR code will display on the screen. It is for the cold wallet to confirm the address by scanning the QR code.
- Use the cold wallet to scan the QR code on the screen of watch wallet, and enter the authorization page. Then, input the password of the cold wallet, and click [Authorization]. The authorized QR code will display on the screen of the cold wallet. It is for the watch wallet to authorize by scanning the QR code.
- Use the watch wallet to scan the QR code on the screen of the cold wallet, confirm the name and address of cold wallet and click [Complete] to finish the watch wallet creation.
How to Conduct a Transaction With Cold Wallet & Watch Wallet
A watch wallet can transfer, delegate, undelegate, redelegate and withdraw as a hot wallet only when it is authorized by the cold wallet for the transaction. And click here to know how to delegate.
Important Notice:
- No matter what kind of wallet you created, the mnemonics and private keys must be well kept. Although the cold wallet can keep your asset away from the hackers, you still need mnemonics to recover the wallet when you lost or forget your password.
- Keep the cold wallet offline forever.
- Watch wallet cannot conduct any transaction without a cold wallet since it has no private key for signing transactions.
- Store pocket money in the hot wallet; store big assets in the cold wallet and conduct the transactions through watch wallet.
About IRISnet
IRISnet is designed to be the foundation for next generation distributed business applications. It is a Bonded PoS blockchain, built with Cosmos-SDK, that enables cross-chain interoperability through a unified service model. You can find more details about IRISnet here.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to join IRISnet in the following groups.
- Follow @IRISnetwork on Twitter
- Join us on Telegram and Riot
- Check out our official website.
