Getting started with Wombat
Hello, and welcome to Wombat!
This is a guide for absolute beginners — people with no blockchain or cryptocurrency experience, no idea about why decentralized games would be beneficial, and who don’t know what to use Wombat for.
Let’s start with a few general remarks.
What is Wombat?
Wombat is your gateway to games based on blockchain technology. Our goal is to make blockchain games as easily accessible and as much fun (or even more!) as traditional, non-blockchain games.
What is a blockchain and what does it do?
Without going into too much detail — a blockchain is an internet-based technology which allows you to really own your digital assets, and lets you transact with those assets in a secure way. Wombat is not a blockchain itself and we don’t run a blockchain, but Wombat gives you access to blockchain, in our case the EOS blockchain.
EOS and the EOS blockchain
It might be a bit confusing at first when you keep reading “EOS” and “blockchain” and then there’s a token which is also called “EOS”, so you might also see a number next to the word EOS or the EOS logo:
The EOS token is the native currency on the EOS blockchain, and a lot of things can be paid for on this blockchain using EOS tokens, like items in games.
TELOS and the Telos blockchain
Likewise, Wombat (currently only on Android) supports the Telos blockchain which has a native currency called TELOS.
Getting started
So, now that you have a little bit of background information, let’s run you through what you can actually do with Wombat.
Setting you up
If you’re a new user, you first have to set yourself up. As you’re reading this article, chances are you already got your Wombat account and are all set up already, but in case you aren’t, this will only take about 20 seconds. This is what you need to do:
Step 1: Use a social login
Experienced blockchain users may wonder about this step as it seems unnecessary to use your social login to use a blockchain wallet. This might be true, but with Wombat you’re getting much more than just an EOS / Telos wallet — free accounts, free resources, exclusive contests, promotions and more. We won’t be selling your data, so don’t worry, but we need to keep a tiny level of control over how many things we’re giving out for free, and to whom, and your social login is part of that.
Step 2: Select your backup location
We don’t want you to have to remember any recovery phrases or separate passwords. With Wombat, we store the private key (which is like a very secure password for the blockchain) encrypted using the Google Drive or Dropbox that you control. That way, we make sure we can always recover your private key, even if you’ve lost your device, and we can also replicate the private key to other devices without us knowing it.
Step 3: Choose a PIN to protect your private key
Choose a 6-digit PIN to protect the private key on your device. Make sure to remember it, but we also offer fingerprint or Face ID options in case you’re too lazy to type it every time (like myself).
Step 4: Select your Telos account name
Choose your Telos account name. The rules for these names aren’t ours, so don’t be surprised that these names need to be:
- 12 characters long (exactly 12!)
- Only letters, the numbers 1–5 or the .
Our service will check that the name you’ve chosen is not taken, and will then create an account for you.
Now, you’re done and can start enjoying Wombat and the blockchain gaming experience.
Getting an EOS account
If you’re using Wombat because you need an EOS for a specific application or game, then simply launch the application or game with Wombat to get your free EOS account. You can also trigger the EOS account creation through the respective Settings entry.
Playing games
Depending on whether you use Wombat on Android, iOS or via the Chrome browser extension, your experience might differ a bit, but in general you’ll find a list of available apps and games in the Explorer section of the bottom navigation of Wombat (on Chrome click on the Wombat icon in the upper right corner of your browser window and choose “Explore”).
Most of the games will simply open within Wombat or your browser, but some might require you to download a native app, like EOS Knights or EOS Dynasty. This means that these games are only available on mobile devices, but don’t worry, you can log in with the same social login on different devices and restore your account to keep playing on all your devices.
Most games and apps will use Wombat directly to log in; however, some of the games (like Prospectors or Upland) might ask you to register with a social account or an email on top of logging in with Wombat.
Good-to-know stuff
Resources
Some of you might have heard that playing games, using apps or even sending tokens on the EOS blockchain requires resources like CPU, NET or RAM. We want you not to have to worry about these things, which is why we’ve abstracted our resources system for you (Find more information about it here). Most of the games within Wombat you’ll be able to play without having to care about resources, at all. Sometimes, however, it might happen that your resources are not enough to do something or you’d like to use more transactions than you get with your free plan. This is what Wombat Prime is for — a monthly subscription that comes with a bunch of perks like extra resources for only about 0.99$ a month (depending on your country). We’re working hard to add even more value to this subscription, so stay tuned.
In case you encounter issues with a game or app saying that you don’t have enough resources (be it CPU, NET, or RAM), please retry doing the same thing once or twice before reaching out to us via our Telegram channel.
Tokens
If you head over to the Wallet view you can see the tokens that you own (it’s under Tokens on the Chrome extension).
Send tokens
You can send tokens via the Send button to any other EOS account, including exchanges. Choose the token you want to send from the dropdown, type in the receiver account, the amount and the memo. The memo is mostly voluntary (leave it blank or type a nice message), except if you send EOS or other tokens to an exchange, where this will be needed in order to have your funds arrive safely. In case you’re uncertain, always try with a small amount first and once you know that it arrived safely, make another, bigger transfer.
Sending tokens to others via Wombat is a lot of fun, because it’s fast and (for most tokens) free, no matter where you are in the world. If you’re in the same place, you can also scan the QR code of the other person’s Wombat to prefill the receiver field.
Receive tokens
If you want to receive tokens from other people, or send tokens like EOS or Telos from an exchange like Coinbase to your Wombat wallet, go to your wallet, choose the token you want to receive and hit the Receive button. Your account name will be displayed at the very top of the screen. Don’t worry if you’re used to Ethereum addresses which look a whole lot different (e.g. 0xd08354542e13E09355f038d6B8bc577093e1007D) — this human-readable account name is all you need to send tokens to your wallet.
In case an exchange asks you to add a memo, feel free to type in anything you want. Wombat-created EOS and Telos accounts don’t require any memo when sending tokens to them.
The EOS and Telos blockchains are really fast and your tokens will appear in Wombat within seconds after the exchange has performed the transaction; however, exchanges might take minutes or hours to actually issue your transaction.
Buy EOS
If you want to buy some items or upgrade your account in games or apps within Wombat, it’s likely you will have to do that in EOS. You can open a Coinbase account by clicking the Buy button in your wallet view. We’re aware this is not the most convenient way of getting hold of EOS tokens, which is why we’re working to partner up with something more lightweight.
Trade tokens
If you want to convert a token into EOS or the other way around, check out Newdex in the Explorer view. Many of the tokens listed in Wombat can be traded there; it’s the decentralized exchange on the EOS blockchain with the most users.
Other apps, games and tokens
If you want to use other games or apps which use the EOS blockchain but you don’t find them in the Explorer, you can use the URL bar in the explorer to open it. We generally try to list all apps and games which work really well with Wombat (hence the selection), but there are tons more which might also work.
In case there are apps or games which you’d like to have listed within Wombat, please reach out to us via our Telegram.
Also, if there’s a token you want to transact with but can’t find it in the list of tokens, please fill this form. We list tokens depending on popular demand, not based on market cap or purpose (except for obvious scams) because we offer a technical service, not financial advice.
The Wombat referral program
Go to Settings and choose the “Invite a friend” option to share Wombat with your friends. Both you and your referred users will receive extra free transactions for one month, and we’re happy to serve your friends, too! The referral program has a few limitations like the total number of referrals which are counted for you each month, or the age of the referred account (codes can only be entered within the first month after account creation).
How to earn with Wombat
We often get the question how users can earn EOS or other cryptocurrencies with Wombat. We know this is a popular topic with blockchain games in general, which is why we’ve compiled this Guide to earning EOS with Wombat.
Enjoy your ride
We hope you’ll enjoy your time with Wombat. We’re striving to make the user experience for EOS-based applications and games in particular as seamless as possible. If you like what we’re doing, please leave a rating (5 stars appreciated :-) ) and a review in the Play Store, Chrome Web store or AppStore so that more people can learn about Wombat. However, if you’re having trouble using Wombat — please reach out to us, we’re happy to help as this entire blockchain space is still rather new and not everything is very intuitive in the way it works.
Please follow us on Twitter, Hive or Medium and join our Telegram group if you want to stay tuned about the newest developments about Wombat.
