Poltergeist Wallet — The Basics

The Writer's Lounge
PhantasticPhantasma
7 min readMar 12, 2021

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Phantasma’s Poltergeist wallet has completed its evolution into it’s latest incarnation: Poltergeist 2.x. Triple chain support (Ethereum, Neo, Phantasma) and seamless cross chain swapping are some of the most notable features of Poltergeist 2.x. This wallet is an excellent fit for those who are used to standalone desktop wallet, or who need an Android wallet. An iOS version will be available in the future. Poltergeist provides access to Phantasma’s decentralized storage and fully supports NFTs.

This tutorial is set up to help you SOULdiers get started with the basics and get an understanding of how the Poltergeist wallet works. The guide assumes that you have downloaded and installed the Poltergeist wallet.

1 — Generate Wallet

1.1 Open Poltergeist, click Generate new wallet

Generate your new Poltergeist wallet

1.2 Enter a name for your wallet.

You can choose any name you want here. Keep in mind that this is the Wallet Name, not the Phantasma Name. You will be able to set to your Phantasma on-chain wallet name later in the process.

Enter a name for your wallet and click Confirm

1.3 Wallet password

You are asked if you want to add a password to your wallet. We strongly advise you to do this. Choose a strong password, back it up and click Yes.

We recommend that you add a password to your wallet

1.4 Set a password

You will have to think of a password of at least 6 characters. Choose safely!

Choose a strong password for added security

1.5 Seed phrase

You are asked to back up your seed phrase. Write down your 12 word seed phrase and never share this information.

Please make sure you back up your seed phrase

1.6 Back up the seed phrase and private keys

The only thing left to do is to confirm that you have written down your 12 word seed phrase. After pressing Confirm, you are done creating your wallet! Next up, we will take a look at how you can stake your SOUL with Poltergeist wallet.

Note: Make sure to back up your WIF, your HEX or your seed phrase — if your device malfunctions, you will need one of these to recover your funds. After you have created the account you can go to Account > Extract WIF to extract your private key. Make sure to back these up and never reveal them to anyone. Do not store your WIF or HEX on a computer or laptop. We suggest using a thumb drive or on paper with a duplicate copy and stored in a safe place. A best practice is to use either a metal backup like CryptoSteel for seed words or stored encrypted with Keypass XC on a (preferably encrypted) removable drive in a secure location.

Be sure to back up your 12-word seed phrase (yes, this is that important)

2 — How to stake SOUL

2.1 Click Stake

To start the staking process click Stake

2.2 Enter amount of SOUL to stake

Enter the amount of SOUL you would like to stake. As mentioned before, please make sure to have 1 extra SOUL if you want to become a Soul Master. You need that token to do an (automatic) cosmic swap to KCAL, which is needed to perform the staking transaction.

How many SOUL do you want to stake?

2.3 Confirmation

You will now be asked to confirm your decision to stake. The pop-up screen will also show the daily amount of Phantasma Energy (KCAL) you can claim per day. Each staked SOUL will earn the user 0.002 KCAL per day.

Each staked SOUL will earn the user 0.002 KCAL per day

2.4 Cosmic Swap

We have mentioned this a few times now, but the Phantasma Energy token (KCAL) is needed in order to stake your SOUL. In case you don’t have any KCAL yet the wallet will give you the option to do a cosmic swap; converting a fraction of a SOUL to KCAL. The KCAL is used to pay for transaction fees. Cosmic swaps provide token swaps directly in your wallet without having to go to an exchange.

If you already have KCAL in another Phantasma wallet, you can send some to this Phantasma address. Proceed to step 2.6 if you already have KCAL.

Confirm the cosmic swap of a fraction of 1 SOUL to KCAL

2.5 Cosmic swap confirmation

In this screen, click Send as a final confirmation. This also shows the estimated fee in KCAL. Note how low the fee is, hence why you only need a little drop of SOUL if you chose to do a cosmic swap in the previous step.

Confirm that you want to perform the cosmic swap of SOUL for KCAL
Confirming the transaction on the Phantasma blockchain

Now we wait while the transaction is being confirmed on the blockchain. Congratulations! You have performed a cosmic swap and received a fraction of KCAL to pay for transactions on the Phantasma blockchain!

2.6 Staking confirmation

The screen below immediately follows the cosmic swap to proceed with the staking process. Press Send to confirm that you want to stake and accept the KCAL fee.

Confirm that you want to stake your SOUL

Enter your password again to authorize staking your SOUL, and click Confirm to continue.

You must sign and authorize the transaction with your password
Confirming the transaction on the Phantasma blockchain

2.7 You have now staked SOUL

Congratulations on staking your SOUL! You can now claim your daily KCAL. If you stake 50k SOUL or more, you will also be eligible for monthly Soul Master rewards.

  • Everyone who stakes a minimum of 2 SOUL will earn KCAL at a rate of 0.002 KCAL per SOUL staked per day.
  • Users who stake 50,000 or more SOUL will earn the title of Soul Master and earn extra rewards from a pool of 125,000 SOUL every month.
  • Soul Masters staking consecutively will receive a special CROWN NFT every 90 days starting from the time of Phantasma’s genesis block. This applies from the first full such 90 day period you have staked. Each CROWN NFT boosts the user’s KCAL generation rate by 5% up to a maximum of 100% if you have 20 CROWNs.
  • CROWN NFTs contain a portion of the ecosystem’s total KCAL fees for the last 90 days, as well as 20% of the ecosystem incentive allocation — evenly distributed to all qualifying wallets.
Your SOUL are now being staked and earning KCAL

3 — Account options

3.1 Customize Account, Storage and Dapps

In the Account section of the Poltergeist wallet, you can:

  • Export your WIF and HEX private keys
  • Set up a Phantasma on-chain wallet name and avatar. You and other users can send tokens by entering the Phantasma address name instead of a wallet address, which is extremely convenient, particularly for users with limited blockchain experience.
  • Upload files to Phantasma’s decentralized storage. Every wallet has a specific amount of kilobytes (KB) allocated in proportion to the amount of staked SOUL. Currently, every staked SOUL earns 40 KB of storage, which means that a Soul Master can initially store up to 2 GB of data.
  • Visit some of Phantasma’s next generation dApps like uMint.

There are two prerequisites for setting up a Phantasma on-chain wallet name and uploading files:
1. You need KCAL
2. You need to have staked SOUL.

NOTE: the Phantasma on-chain wallet name is not the same as the name you set up while creating a wallet. Your Phantasma on-chain wallet name represents your address and allows others to simply input your Phantasma on-chain name to send tokens to you.

The account section of your wallet has many options to enhance your user experience

Enjoy the ecosystem!

The Phantasma Team

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The Writer's Lounge
PhantasticPhantasma

A happy collective of blockchain aficionados — dedicated to educating the masses, one article at a time