Ledger Nano S is probably the most popular hardware cryptocurrency wallet in the world because of its form factor which is reminiscent of a simple USB-stick. It’s small, reliable, robust and not expensive at all. It supports a very wide arrange of digital assets including TRX. But it didn’t support Tron-based TRC-20 coins.
And that’s just changed. The device’s support (as well as Ledger Blue, another hardware wallet manufactured by the same company) will now integrate Tron’s Foundation’s app so that all those TRC-20 tokens can be stored and managed.
An advantage of this kind of hardware wallet is that your digital wealth is not online, but in offline cold storage that you can carry in your pocket, so it’s unhackable because it’s out of the reach of any potential attackers. Of course, its small size requires that you don’t misplace it.
The new development in the wallet’s evolution was announced in the following tweet:
Tron SR CryptoChain announced a safer way to keep the private key to access the Tron assets on its Medium. TronLedger desktop wallet and Ledger Nano S will give the users access to their assets in the Tron Network while securing their private key.
Using TRX with a Ledger device
First, of course, you need the hardware wallet but also a computer. The supported operating systems are Ubuntu Linux 16.10, Windows 8, and MacOS 10.9 or more recent versions of any of them. You also need to be online on the internet and your Ledger Live and Ledger Nano S already initialized.
It’s all quite simple from here. You just install the Ledger Nano S and enter your wallet. It will show you a list of addresses for Tron. Each of those addresses is automatically activated as soon as you receive some TRX from the outside (another account or wallet, an exchange platform, etc.)
You can find all of your wallet’s information in the dashboard. It includes transaction history, energy, frozen amounts, bandwidth, TRC20 tokens balance, TRC10 token balance, TRX balance, and Tron power.
So now that your hardware wallet has some TRX in it, you can send and receive some or all of your TRX or TRC10 and TRC20 tokens, use them for voting or exchanging. Freezing TRX tokens also get you the bandwidth points you need so that transfers within the network is free of cost, and/or to get the energy that will enable you to transact with smart contracts, also for free.
Energy and freezing also get you Tron Power which is the thingy you need to vote for the network’s super representatives (the nodes that verify the blockchain and produce new blocks). And, once you meet with the freezing period, you can unfreeze your coins and use them in any way you please.
Ledger and USDT-Tron
The support for Tron’s TRC20 tokens was announced by ledger on last July 2018, so it’s been in the works for a while. And there’s still one such token that won’t be supported, for the time being, USDT-Tron. The stablecoin was added to the Tron environment earlier this month. The device supports USDT-ETH still, but owners should swap those tokens for the new Tron-based tokens as soon as they can. The company behind the ledger tells users that compatibility with USDT-Tron “it’s being looked into.”
Tether partnered with the Tron Foundation so that the USDT cryptocurrency is upgraded from the Bitcoin-based Omni blockchain to Tron’s. The latest platform to support it is Poloniex which is compatible with both versions now and will help holders to swap their tokens to the new version.
In further USDT-related news, there’s an airdrop coming for eligible users who hold USDT which will be distributed depending on the amount of USDT swapped. “Once the airdrop begins, Poloniex customers will be credited based on the amount of Tether they hold on Poloniex,” according to the exchange.
Image courtesy of Pixabay.
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