Join the Fetch.ai Journey into Decentralized AI

On the 31st of March 2021, Fetch.ai launched its v2 mainnet. You can take part in this journey by using our token bridge to move your FET ERC-20 tokens to the mainnet. This is the start of an exciting future that will allow the power of Autonomous Economic Agents and AI to be applied to DeFi and many other areas. Fetch.ai is part of an interchain future and we are looking forward to seeing agents deployed on many chains across the Cosmos and Ethereum ecosystems, and beyond.

This is highly experimental software and to reward token holders for the risk, and for being present at the very start, the network will offer returns for staking of up to 4% per month for the first two months of the network’s operation. This corresponds to an annual reward rate of 63%. This decreases to 2% in the following two months and 1% in the two months after that. Overall, this corresponds to a reward of 15% in the first six months of the network being launched.

To earn these rewards, token holders will have to hurry; the bridge for migrating tokens has a cap of 60 million FET tokens and it will not be possible to transfer more tokens to the mainnet after this cap has been reached. Don’t worry too much if you miss out; after 2 months, the cap will be increased to 120 million FET, followed by a further increase to 250 million FET before the cap is removed altogether. The time-line below shows key dates that you should be aware of:

Months 1–2, March 31st to May 31st, 2021: 60 million FET
Months 3–4, June 1st to July 15th: 120 million FET
Months 5–6, July 16th to September 30th: 250 million FET
Months 6+, October 1st onwards: Infinite (no limit)

Great, so how do I take part?
Taking part in the mainnet is very straightforward. The first thing you need to do is create an address on the Fetch.ai network that can receive funds. For this, you need either a Ledger Nano or a mobile device. To transfer the ERC-20 tokens, you need a Ethereum wallet that supports smart contracts. The different options for setting up a mainnet wallet are described below.

Setting up a Mainnet wallet (Mobile device)

1. Download the Cosmostation app for either iOS or Android.
2. Choose the “Fetch.ai Mainnet” from the available options.
3. The app will take you through the process of either importing a 24-word mnemonic or creating one from scratch.
4. After completing this step, you will see your address on mainnet starting with “fetch1…” and containing 38 more letters and numbers. Now you’re ready to receive funds on mainnet! Skip over the next section to make the Ethereum transfers.

Setting up a Mainnet wallet (Ledger Nano)

1. After setting up your device with a PIN and passphrase, you should check that both the Ethereum and Cosmos software are installed on the device using the Ledger Live app.
2. You can then find your Fetch address by installing a Chrome browser and then following this link to the block explorer. The address can then be found by following these steps:
3. Connect your Ledger Nano to your computer, unlock it with your PIN, and then open the Cosmos application on the device.
4. Use your Chrome browser to visit the block explorer.
5. Click on the “key” icon in the top-right corner of the page, next to the language choice. This will ask for your permission to connect to the Ledger Nano. After approving the connection, you will be “signed into” the block explorer. After connecting, the “key” icon will become an avatar or “person” icon.
6. (Windows users only. If you receive the error message ‘unable to reset device’, then in the address bar type the this text into the address bar: chrome://flags/#new-usb-backend, and then disable the ‘Enable new USB backend’ icon at the top of the page).
7. To find your address, now click on the “person” icon. It will prompt you with: “You are signed in as…”, followed by your address, which should begin with “fetch1” and contains a further 38 letters and numbers.
8. Now that you have your Fetch address, you are ready to transfer your ERC-20 FET tokens to mainnet.

Transferring FET ERC-20 tokens

If you’ve got this far, congratulations! You’re now ready to transfer your tokens to mainnet. For this step, you will need an Ethereum wallet that supports smart contracts such as Metamask.

Then visit our bridge UI here.

Interface for ERC-20 to native token transfers.

1. Click the “unlock” button to connect your wallet to the site. You will then be taken to the transfer interface. The source address (Ethereum address) will be already filled in, and you will see a blank field for the Native address (this is your Fetch mainnet destination address you generated in the previous step).
2. Paste your address starting with “fetch1”, from your mainnet wallet, into the “Native Address” field, and then click the “Transfer” button. In the UI, the Ethereum address is connected to the site through Metamask or other browser extension, and needs to be the source from which your tokens will move. The Fetch (Native) address is your destination address on mainnet.
3. This will trigger a transaction that will ask you to “approve” the bridge contract for holding your tokens. If you’re using a Ledger Nano, be sure to also sign it on your physical device, and it will be submitted to the Ethereum blockchain.
4. To complete the migration, you will be asked to sign a second transaction by the bridge UI.

Once the transaction is finalised on Ethereum, the migration to mainnet will take between 2 and 10 minutes. You can track the arrival of your tokens on mainnet using the Cosmostation or Forbole block explorers.

After your Fetch address has been credited with tokens, you can delegate to a validator to start earning staking rewards using either the Cosmostation app or our block explorer (instructions for this can be found here). Be careful to select your validator wisely, as they are working for you. The more effective they are at operating the network the greater the rewards you will receive. Several experienced validators have agreed to operate the Fetch.ai network with links to their company websites displayed on the block explorers. Reverse swaps from native to ERC-20 tokens can also be made using the bridge UI and will be described in a later blog post.

If you want to get involved or have any questions please visit our Discord server or our Telegram channel.