What is a Herotag? How Maiar Uses The Elrond Distributed Name Service (DNS)

Kevin Lydon
HeliosStaking
Published in
6 min readFeb 1, 2021

For many people who own digital assets, the price of their digital assets is at the forefront of their mind. Where and how they store their digital assets tends to be an afterthought that falls to the wayside. However, safely and securely storing one’s digital assets is arguably the most important decision any digital asset “hodler” can make. Properly storing digital assets in the right wallet is one of the most overlooked pieces of the digital asset puzzle. In this article, we will discuss a major issue facing digital asset wallets, and how Maiar’s Distributed Naming Service (DNS) solves this problem.

One of the main issues facing digital asset wallets is the wallet address itself. In order to receive a digital asset, you must provide the corresponding wallet address. However, these wallet addresses are long, complex strings of alphanumeric code that are nearly impossible to remember. For example, Ethereum encodes its 20-byte addresses into hexadecimal characters, which means that two characters are needed for every byte.

This string of data, oftentimes referred to as Base16 encoding, is typically preceded by 0x, which is a common programming notation that denotes that that data that follows is in hexadecimal (base 16) format, which gives all Ethereum addresses a 42-character string that looks like this: 0x27a8446D867188d7896A169195b0C962A2ed5D2.

Bitcoin and many other digital assets use 25-byte addresses. In order to encode these addresses in a more compact format than that of hexadecimal, Bitcoin and many other digital assets use Base58 encoding, which is based on 58 different alphanumeric characters.

These consist of all of both upper and lower case English letters, excluding the easily-misread characters L, I, O, plus the numbers 0–9, excluding the easily-confused character 0. So 26 upper case letters + 26 lower case letters + 10 numbers = 62 choices, minus L,I,O,0 = 58 choices. For Bitcoin, this creates a 26–35 character string, with most addresses being 34 characters long and looking something like this: 3FHR2nDw5QspYQEJyJg5sGAXXhnm8qegX9.

The complex nature of these wallet addresses creates a vulnerability because not being able to remember the alphanumeric code means that a bad actor can find a way to exploit this. Because few, if any, people actually memorize their wallet address, the most common way that a person will input a wallet address is by copying it and pasting it. This creates a weakness which can be exploited, and there have been cases of malware installed onto a person’s computer which will alter a wallet address during this process.

The hacker simply programs the malware to recognize a wallet address, and then when it is copied to the clipboard, the code replaces the correct wallet address with the hacker’s wallet address. Because most people don’t double-check the wallet address and just trust what they copied is the same as what they pasted, this type of malware is relatively effective when it comes to stealing digital assets.

Due to the irreversible nature of digital asset transactions, once this happens, your funds are gone forever. The complexity of wallet addresses coupled with the potential for losing funds is definitely intimidating for many and is likely a major hurdle stopping a huge group of potential users from onboarding to this technology.

So how can this process be improved? One of the main improvements to this process would be making it more user-friendly. Already, there have been some user-friendly improvements to the process regarding the private key. Originally, in order to use a digital asset wallet, the user would have to securely write down the private key. This process was wrought with problems, as some users would miswrite some characters in the private key, or not write the private key clearly, which meant that the private key could not be easily read later.

To improve this process, many digital asset wallets adopted a “seed-phrase” to make the process of recovering the private key easier. Instead of a complex alphanumeric string, a twelve-word phrase consisting of a series of simple words is used to secure and recover the private key. By using simple English words, the likelihood of miswriting or misreading the seed phrase is reduced.

If a similar process to the seed phrase for the private key were adopted and further simplified for the wallet address, this would significantly improve the process for many users, and help to onboard more users to the technology. Instead of using a complex alphanumeric string for a wallet address, an easy-to-remember word or name as a hero tag would be a likely solution to this problem.

How Maiar Solves this with the Elrond Distributed Naming Service (DNS)

The Maiar digital wallet is one of the most secure and easy to use digital asset wallets ever created. With a focus on security and usability, the Maiar wallet is a revolution in the digital asset wallet space. In addition to its robust and uncompromising security, Maiar simplifies the problem of the complex wallet address. By using the Distributed Name System (DNS) to create herotags, the formerly long, complex alphanumeric string is instead replaced with an easy-to-read name or word.

The DNS acts like a translator that allows associating complex pieces of information, such as a wallet address, to a human-readable name. This means that instead of sending money to a long, impossible-to-remember string like 0x27a8446D867188d7896A169195b0C962A2ed5D2E, you can just send it to a herotag such as @AliceJohnson. Gone are the days of inputting a complex alphanumeric string, and gone are the security risks associated with the process of copying and pasting this string from one place to another.

This unique feature will help to onboard the next billion users. The Maiar digital wallet is making the simplest and most powerful financial application that is secure and easy to use. This will unlock a whole new world of possibilities for digital assets. In addition to paying for goods and services with herotags, digital assets can easily be used for a variety of other purposes, such as charitable donations.

Instead of worrying about whether or not you have the correct wallet address for your favorite charity, Maiar makes it simple and easy to send digital assets to an organization like the Red Cross by simply sending it to their unique but easy-to-read herotag @RedCross. All you need is a mobile device and access to the internet. With the launch of the Maiar wallet comes a revolution in the world of securely storing digital assets. The Maiar will be the simplest, most secure, and most universally accessible way to buy, store, stake, lend and spend eGold. Download the Maiar wallet, and join the revolution today.

In addition to this massive improvement, the Maiar wallet has an incredibly intuitive UX and UI. It is extremely easy to use and is designed with the user in mind. It has some features that make it similar to Google Pay or Venmo but with the critical difference that it does not collect personal information, which makes using the Maiar wallet a very secure and private experience.

About Maiar

Maiar is a digital wallet and global payments app that allows you to exchange and securely store money on your mobile phone. You can use Maiar to send and receive money near-instantly, to and from anyone around the world by just using a phone number or herotag.

Visit: maiar.com and download the app today.

To learn more about Helios Staking and how to stake visit us at:

Website: Helios Staking: Professional Staking-as-a-Service Provider

Twitter: Helios Staking 🔥 (@HeliosStaking)

LinkedIn: Helios Staking B.V.

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