Pre-voting Guide
Hello fellow ICONist. Since we are approaching pre-voting stage, we thought it would be best to have a guide about the voting process. This guide will have three main sections:
1. How to have a personal, secure wallet?
2. How to vote?
3. Why should you vote?
1. How to have a personal, secure wallet?
Usually, people tend to keep their cryptocurrency assets on exchanges. This is due to ease of access and having fear of having funds stolen otherwise. Usual saying across community is “not your keys, not your coins”. This is because you cannot utilize what network offers to you without having a personal wallet. For voting as well, you need to have a personal wallet. Let’s see how to create one.
First, go to the page https://icon.foundation/contents/products/iconex.
Scroll to this part on the page. ICONex is a cross platform wallet for utilizing ICON network. We will create a wallet by using ICONex. Download ICONex to your computer. After installing the Chrome add-on, following page will open.
Click on “Create Wallet”.
We want to create wallet for ICX, in order to store our assets and utilize the network of ICON. Make sure ICON(ICX) is selected.
Enter a wallet name and a strong password. You should select a strong password and store it in order to keep access to the wallet.
Download the keystore file and again, like the password, keep it somewhere safe. You need to make sure that no one has access to your password and keystore file besides yourself. You can also store private key to have the access to the wallet.
Again, store your private key, just like previous two. You will gain access by either keystore file or private key.
After making sure private key, keystore file and password is stored and secured, your wallet is ready to use. You can simply login to your exchange and transfer ICX to your new, personal wallet.
Your Icon wallet address is the string starting with hx. You need to provide this address to your exchange interface in order to transfer funds.
It is easy to say that you need to keep your funds safe, but it is relatively hard to do actually. Now let’s suggest some ways to have a secure personal wallet.
You can buy a hardware wallet and have your ICX stored in hardware wallet. By utilizing a hardware wallet, you simply connect your wallet to an external device which was designed to protect your assets from any malicious attack.
We know it is a bit tedious to do all of this, especially if you are not familiar with it. In section 3, we hope to convince you by providing benefits of voting and why should you carry all of these steps.
2. How to vote?
Images for this part were taken from ICON Foundation website. Check https://icon.community/iconsensus/prevoting/.
Click Stake button from ICONex, with your balance and account ready.
Stake as much as ICX you desire to stake.
After your stake is approved by network, click Vote button.
Select your P-Reps you desire to vote.
Adjust your vote to each selected P-Rep and vote.
3. Why should you vote?
Voting is your chance to designate some groups or companies to work according to your desires, shape the network according to your needs and earn ICX while doing so. According to amount of staked ICX on the network, you will earn ICX, which should be annually from 6% to 36%, depending on percentage of staked ICX. If your selected P-Rep has Low Production Penalty or Disqualification Penalty, 6% from your delegation for that P-Rep will be burned. That’s very unlikely and you can change your vote anytime if you think that will happen. There is a way to totaly avoid it with 2 server configration here a screenshot from icondev documents which clearly states p-reps can totaly prevent any network failures. So as iconist everyone should focus on who they vote for. Burn chances are very low and you can avoid it. It’s just a system to keep everyone on their toes.
Image for this setup taken from icondev documets. You can find much more at https://www.icondev.io/
Voting properly is very crucial. Please, check each P-Rep and what they are planning to do, what kind of network they envision, how will your opinions shape P-Reps activities over here. Also, as a recommendation from our team, please consider voting for multiple P-Reps. Each P-Rep has a different group and different perspective in mind. Select a few and distribute your votes accordingly. Each P-Rep can increase the health and usability of network in different manner, thus it is useful for many P-Reps having close vote amounts. We establish some decentralization and many different opinions, which will surely increase the quality of future operations on the network. If you have any question about the progress feel free to contact us over any channel.
Please consider checking our proposal, joining or Telegram and following our Twitter. We are excited about pre-voting, hope you are as well.
Piconbello Team
Website: https://www.piconbello.com/
Telegram: https://t.me/pICONbello
Twitter: https://twitter.com/piconbello
