How to Issue an Asset on Ardor in 5 mins
You’ve probably seen many articles telling you how you can create an ERC-20 token in under 20 mins and you may have even followed one or two of these to create your own token (I have).
While Ethereum is a great platform for developers, it can sometimes be a bit overwhelming to those who don’t have much of a technical background but would still like to take part in this new, exciting blockchain space.
While tools do exist out there to make the creation of ERC-20 tokens easier, there is no real easy way of doing it while interacting directly with the network itself. Even with wonderful tools such as Truffle available it can still be pretty daunting to non-technical folk. This is where Ardor steps in.
Ardor is touted as the leading contender in the BlockChain as a Service space and with good reason. It is more user friendly for individuals or businesses to get started with, as everything can be done out the box from within the official wallet without stress or worry.
Ardor isn’t just a user friendly blockchain but is probably the most technically advanced live main-net product available today. It currently boasts advanced features such as Child-Chain technology, Proof Of Stake consensus algorithm, built in Decentralised Exchange and with Pruning and Light Contracts coming later this year it has all but eliminated the scaling issues that currently blight other blockchain technologies.
On top of this it is well run by the company Jelurida, who have more than 5 years experience in this space with their market leading NXT software and an incredible team of developers. Marketing and hype has always been an issue but with the money now in from the Ignis ICO and a product to rival any other, this should improve over time.
So, what is this BlockChain as a Service thing anyway? Well, it has often been said that Ardor is like the WordPress of the blockchain world. This is something that I can relate to as a web developer, and especially as one who has worked very closely with WordPress throughout the years (shameless plug for my Responsive Menu plugin).
When I am creating a new website, I essentially have 2 options. I can go down the very fine tuned and laborious route of creating my own stylesheets, HTML, JavaScript, CMS system etc. from scratch or download a piece of software that has essentially solved all the common problems involved in doing this and thus saves me a lot of time and security concerns.
The second method above would be the Ardor version of working with the blockchain. A lot of the security concerns have been solved already, such as issuing assets and currencies on the blockchain so I don’t have to worry about it. Although ERC-20 token contracts follow a set standard, there is still opportunity for developers to make mistakes or introduce bugs into their code and deploy them to the network, in Ardor this is not the case.
With all that in mind, let’s go about issuing an asset on the Ardor blockchain which is akin to creating an ERC-20 token. This asset could then be used to launch your own ICO, run a ticket exchange site or any range of other activities.
Step One — Downloading the Ardor wallet
The first thing we need to do is to download and install the Ardor wallet. This is as easy as going to https://www.jelurida.com/, scrolling down under the Ardor header and clicking on the relevant link for either Windows, Mac or Unix.
I am running a Linux machine with Ubuntu 18.04 installed here so I will download the Unix Installer.
Step Two — Installing the Ardor Wallet
Windows and Mac: Now you have the relevant download for your machine, it’s time to install it. For Windows and Mac users, it should be as simple as double clicking the installation file you downloaded.
Linux: For Linux users, you need to navigate in your terminal to the location of the download and give it permissions, as below:
>> chmod +x ardor-client-2.0.14.sh
Now, you can run it by simply typing the below in your terminal:
>> ./ardor-client-2.0.14.sh
You are now faced with 9 screens to work through one by one, the first is to select your language. Currently there are 25 languages to choose from in the drop-down so select the one relevant to you.
From here, you can click Next on Step 1, accept the terms on Step 2 and click Next on Step 3. Step 4 asks you where you would like to install the files, the default is fine. When it tells you the target directory will be created, simply click OK.
Step 5 is probably the most interesting one and the one you will want to pay a bit of attention to. By default the installer will install Ardor as a full node on the mainnet. This is fine for what we are doing, however if you want to deploy your assets to the testnet instead (which is a good idea anyway), then you will need to check the second box. Step 6 is for setting up shortcuts and you can leave as it is. Finally, Step 7 will actually install the files and Step 8 will confirm your installation.
Well done, you now have a working Ardor node and wallet installed on your machine and you are ready to setup your account, wasn’t that easy!
Step Three — Creating an Ardor Account
Now the Ardor wallet has been installed, you can launch it as you would do with any other program on your computer by double clicking on the shortcut item created on your machine.
Once this has loaded, you will be faced with the screen below:
To create an account, you need to click on the text that says DON’T HAVE AN ACCOUNT? CLICK HERE TO CREATE ONE!
Doing this will generate for you a 12 word passphrase which is then used to create your public key and your Ardor address. It is imperative that you do not share this passphrase with anyone or lose it, doing either of those things will likely end up with you losing all your funds. The passphrase should be treated the same way you do your BitCoin private keys.
Your public address will look similar to ARDOR-BU6M-JLSV-9GLF-3MEYA and is what you will use for giving to people for receiving funds.
Once you have written your passphrase down somewhere safe, you need to click the I will not forget my passphrase and I will never disclose it box and hit Next.
The next screen is a nice sanity checking method built into the wallet, which asks you to confirm you have written down your passphrase somewhere by entering it again. Do this and then click Next.
During this process, the Ardor wallet will have been downloading the blockchain in the background and will continue to do so until you are up to date. Currently, the Ardor blockchain is relatively small so this shouldn’t take too long on a good connection.
At this point it is probably a good idea to close down the wallet completely and try and login again with your passphrase for your own sanity checking. Too many people have lost funds due to not copying the passphrase correctly, forgetting to save what they had copied or by entering it into something like Microsoft Word that has added erroneous characters on the end.
If you were to have lost your passphrase at this point it is not a problem as you can just create a new account rather than realising after you have credited your account with all your hard earned cash.
Step Four — Crediting your Account with Ignis
For this example we will be taking advantage of the first Child Chain on Ardor, called Ignis which will allow you to create assets on top of it.
The first thing we need to do is switch from the Ardor chain inside the wallet, to the Ignis chain. You can do that by clicking on the little drop-down on the left that currently says ARDR inside it and selecting IGNIS.
Once you are inside, you will see the menu options along the left sidebar will have changed and now specifically include an option called Assets (more on this later).
Crediting your account with Ignis is as simple as it is with Bitcoin or Ethereum (and faster). Head over to Bittrex or any other reputable exchange that currently lists Ignis, purchase some and then send it to the public wallet address you created earlier, similar to ARDOR-BU6M-JLSV-9GLF-3MEYA.
Once the exchange has processed your transaction, you will see your account balance credited.
Step Five — Creating your Asset
Now that we are on the Ignis chain and we have our Ignis balance, it’s time to create our asset. Remember I mentioned that when we switched to the Ignis chain earlier that we now had an Assets menu setup, well now it’s time to use it!
Click on the menu item to expand the items and then at the bottom you will see a new menu item named Issue Asset. Clicking on this will show a pop-up window that should look similar to the below:
As you can see in the warning message at the top, creating an asset is final. In the same way an ERC-20 token can’t be changed once submitted, this is the same as an Ignis asset.
The options presented to you at this point are pretty straight forward, but for the sake of completeness let’s go through them all.
Asset Name: This is the name you want to give to your coin. The name must be between 3 and 10 characters long, only latin characters, no spaces and doesn’t need to be unique.
Description: This is a description you want to give to your coin to let people know what it is for.
Singleton Asset: Tick this if you only want one of this asset to exist, this will also force the quantity field to 1 and the decimals field to 0.
Quantity: Enter here the amount of your asset you want to be made available.
Decimals: Enter here the amount of decimal places you want your assets to go to. For example, selecting 0 decimal points means only whole pieces can be traded between users, 2 decimals would act more like the fiat currencies we are used to in current society. The maximum is 8.
Fee: To create your asset on the network, you need to pay a fee in Ignis to do so, clicking the Calculate button will automatically fill this in for you. The current fee is 0.1 Ignis which is roughly $0.01 in USD value. I didn’t mention how cheap it was to do this either did I?
Passphrase: You need to enter your passphrase to confirm you are who you say you are and to be able to issue your asset to the Ignis chain of the Ardor network.
Once you have completed all these fields, and your form looks something similar to mine below you are ready to click the Issue Asset button:
Once you hit Issue Asset and assuming all went well, a green notification should pop up informing you that the transaction was successful and that your asset will be issued soon.
You may need to wait for your transaction to be confirmed and propagated through the network but once complete you can easily confirm that your asset has been created.
This time click on the My Assets menu item in the sidebar under the Assets tab and you will see your new asset listed, similar to mine below:
From here, you have options such as sending some of your assets to another user, burning some of the assets or creating more. For more control over the ability to cap the number of supply and not allow burning or minting assets, you may want to look at issuing a currency on Ignis instead (check for another blog post on that soon).
Built into the Ardor wallet is its very own Asset Exchange which enables you to sell your token for Ignis easily. Below is a screenshot of me setting up a sell order for 50,000 of my new asset at 0.1 Ignis per token.
And that is it, you have now successfully created an asset on the Ardor network, on the Ignis Child Chain and offered it for sale on the inbuilt Decentralised Asset Exchange.
You can now do whatever you like with your new asset, including running your own ICO to disperse the tokens, building your own dapp using your new asset to interact with, or just stare at its beauty. Let your imagination run wild!
Who knew the Ardor wallet was so easy and intuitive to use and we haven’t even scratched the surface of what can be done yet.
Stay tuned for further posts on building a dapp with Ardor, issuing a currency, running polls, the decentralised exchange, data cloud, bundling, marketplace and much much more!
If you would like to donate any Ardor or Ignis please do so to my personal account ARDOR-BU6M-JLSV-9GLF-3MEYA
