The Independent Republic

IOTA (MIOTA) is one of the most promising projects among the leading distributed ledger technology platforms. One of the Co-Founders stated that the cryptocurrency will definitely be one of the top 3 DLT platforms in 2018, based on market capitalization.

In order to reach that goal, IOTA must generate a market cap of $50bn at least based on current stats. Dom Schiener: “we will either be a trillion dollar project or nothing”. At $1 trillion dollar market cap, one MIOTA, the current native currency of the platform would cost around $350 USD per unit – in opposition to its price at the moment that barters below $3 USD on global cryptocurrency exchange markets.

There is one small problem tho. IOTA (MIOTA) is not built to be a monetary platform that humans would use, but it’s rather a platform used by machinery connected to the Internet Of Things (IoT).

Therefore the IOTA Foundation did not plan to create a “traditional” cryptocurrency wallet where you can store/exchange your funds with the touch of a button since machines could do that instantly without errors, efficient timing and extreme accuracy on their own.

Of course, that was not even close to a reason that could stop the “geeks” creating their own way connecting into “The Tangle” (IOTA’s prototype DLT network) and exchange funds between ‘mortal’ individuals. The IOTA ledger “lightwallet” (current version 2.5.7.) was built to interfere with the tangle while using a ‘user-friendly’ interface. Or at least that’s what they called it, compared to not having a wallet at all.

So, what’s the problem right? The answer is “there is no problem”, if you’re familiar with GitHub, have basic programming/coding knowledge and know a few things about nodes, how to create a seed, how to promote it and most importantly how to protect it, since IOTA addresses are meant to be used only once.

Oh, and once in a while, there is a special event in the community called “the snapshot”, where all wallet users are called to promote their old information into the newly generated “spots” in The Tangle in order to “relax” the network and let it continue from later blocks in the timeline of the Tangle’s evolution. All that with extreme accuracy, caution and timing since transferring funds during the “snapshot” could again result in the loss of your funds. A wrong input in a digit or character could also result in permanent funds losses.

You see, it’s not really a “problem”, it’s just that it’s too complicated compared to a simple Ethereum Wallet for example, where you can have your address showing in your blog’s front page and people could use it infinite times to send you funds to that address. You don’t have to watch for the next “snapshot” and you could literally forget about it for years before using it again unlike using the lightwallet that requires your constant attention.

The real problem is that unfortunately there are no alternatives to “lightwallet” and the only way to have IOTA (MIOTA) without experiencing the situation pre-described is to store them on exchange markets, which we all know that it’s not always the best idea.

Luckily IOTA’s population and the increasing demand to own that magnificent token led many innovative groups to create their own alternative IOTA wallets that vary from slightly to a lot more user-friendly platforms compared to the current version of the initial “lightwallet”.

According to a recent post by iotasupporter on Medium the following three upcoming IOTA wallets are going to get some attention in the next Q of 2018:

1. UCL’s Trinity Wallet
2. Nelium
3. CarrIOTA

These wallets, ranging from a well-designed University College Of London platform to hardware solutions provided by CarrIOTA will solve most of the issues regular users experience with the lightwallet at this moment, by introducing Automatic transaction promotion & reattachment (no need to reattach all the time anymore) Multiple outgoing transactions. Cached Addresses and Balances. Automatic seed generation and storage. Automatic node selection. Seamless snapshots (no need to be aware of the next snapshot) among many other new functions and abilities that would not only eliminate “problems” lazy people experienced with the “lightwallet” but also give the ability to new “newbie” users to join the IOTA revolution.

Let me know what you think about the new IOTA wallets in the comments below. Did you experienced problems with your “lightwallet” as well, or did you kept your MIOTA on the exchange market?

Reporting for The Independent Republic, Ross Peili