Hi All.
I know the storage of Maidsafe Coins has been an exploited topic, but I still can’t find the answers I’m seeking and I don’t feel like trusting my coins to an exchange or keeping them on-line at Omni.
Here’s what bothers me. I’ve invested in a Ledger wallet and I considered sending my MAIDs to an address generated within it. As far as I’m aware, any BTC address works, so my Ledger should be just fine, and although I can’t be sure, I don’t expect them to appear at all, or at least, not appear as Maidsafe Coins. In other words I might not have the tools to handle them. Well, what happens then when I decide to move them? I will have to export my private key to MSC compatible wallet, but how do I do even that, If with Ledger the private keys never leave the chip?!
I’m not very familair with the Ledger wallet, but if you can’t extract your private key, that sounds really problematic where MaidSafeCoins are concerned, I think? The only way I know to send MaidSafeCoins is through the omniwallet. I only plan to do that once, to exchange them for SafeCoins. I currently have my wallet on USB sticks that I otherwise don’t use at all.
I have them sent directly from the exchange to a paper wallet address. I have imported private key from paper wallet to Omni wallet then sent maidsafecoins back to exchange without any problems (just for testing). I’m keeping all my maidsafecoins on paper till launch.
First of all, thanks allot for helping.
Now, let me see if I understand this correctly. Pardon me if I ask the obvious, I am a beginner.
- I can go to, lets say, bitaddress.org and generate an address and it’s private key.
- I can scribble a note, paste them onto a txt file and encrypt it, take snapshot of those or just print them out in what’s de facto a paper wallet. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
- I send my MAIDs to the freshly generated address.
- One day, hopefully sooner rather than later SafeCoin launches and I type down my private key at Omni, somewhere where, I presume, it should say “import private key” and once that’s done I can expect to see my MAIDs.
Have I gotten it right?
You don’t need to do step four to view your coins at the address. You can view them by displaying the balance for the public address (no need to expose your private key) using Omni.
Step 4 is only needed when you are going to use Omni to move your MaidSafecoin, and at this point you will also need a small amount of BTC (only .001 or so I think) to pay the fee for moving them.
Yes on all 4 counts.
You could do 4) on your own desktop if you want to make that step even more private. Or you could just use the coins from your desktop.
There’s little need to “check” whether the coins are there or not. If you generate the address/private key combo in a secure way (and it can be done on your desktop too, say with Armory or shell scripts), the only leak can be you. The other possibility is that someone figures out a way to get around the Bitcoin security (in which case you’d read about that in the news).
Reading this thread has made me reconsider whether I should continue storing my Maidsafe on my omniwallet. What in fact is the risk of doing so? It seems to me (as a non-techie) that their system is secure.
Without re-reading the thread, the general problem with crypto currencies is that people can get hacked, so if your private key is exposed on a machine, it is possible you’ll get hacked. This is why you’ll hear a lot about storing coins in “cold wallets” (essentially wallets where the private key has never been near the internet) or “air-gapped machines” (where the private key has never been saved on a machine that is ever connected to the internet).
A second issue is how reliable the wallet code is, and Omni wallet is deemed less reliable than say bitcoin-QT simply because it is newer, less widespread and subject to less scrutiny.
So it isn’t that it is insecure, but that using it exposes you to unnecessary risks that you might want to protect yourself from. Each person finds their own balance between perceived risk and perceived security.
Hope that helps rather than confuses!
I wouldn’t trust Omni simply because it is online, hence it is vulnerable. And they haven’t implemented 2FA yet, which I find puzzling.
I decided by the way, to clean wipe my spare laptop, freshly install the OS and I opted for Electrum, for the reason that is so lite and I can always recover it by the seed.
The seed itself I recorded on two separate formatted flash memories (which I keep offline of course) and in an encrypted form on my cloud storage.
I only use omni as a watch only.
Now, since I do not consider myself too techie either, please tell me if I have screwed something over here.
Thanks for the replies.
I didn’t realise it was possible to store Maidsafe on Electrum.
Presumably, to mitigate the risk I could transfer all or some of my Maidsafe from Omni to Electrum.
You can store MaidSafecoin on any bitcoin address, but to move it you require access to the private key so you can import that address into Omniwallet. You also need a small amount of BTC at the address to handle the transaction fee.
So the electrum wallet is just being used here to obtain a bitcoin address, you can’t view or move MaidSafecoin with it.
It is possible to store MaidSafe on ANY BTC wallet, but having said that, be careful. As I said when opening the topic, I found no way of extracting the private key out of the Ledger. Obviously, the whole point with Ledger is that it is considered secure because the private key never leaves the chip.
However, I think Ledger works with Green Wallet, and I although I haven’t researched it, I suspect there might be a way of synchronizing Ledger with some PC wallet and then extracting the private keys.
Maybe someone else will be of better use to you than I am. I’m rather new to all this myself.
I was considering making a multi sig address to store Maidsafecoin, but I think I could end up with the same problem as storing on a Ledger. You can check in, but you can’t check out?
I think I will use a paper wallet. I’m not particularly comfortable with it, for no rational reason. It definitely feels good to be able to see your balance when you want to. I know that you can look up the balance… I’m a simple creature, I guess. 
Does anyone off the top of their head know how to get the priv keys off master exchange? I’m assuming that’s what I’ll need to exchange at launch. I haven’t even looked into it yet cause I’m always on the move but if it’s self explanatory then no reply necessary
Maybe you could first check the assumption and then ask questions based upon it ? 
No, you won’t need it.
Hey! 
Thank you for the answer
MaidSafeCoins privát kulcsom van nekem és ugyan működik mint többi coinok de szerintem még váltás más coinra lehet váltani attól hogy milyen pénztálcát használ!
Welcome to the forum @Gyula . Please post in English on the forum. Some other languages are supported under the #local category.
Üdvözöllek a fórumban @Gyula . Kérjük, írj angolul a fórumon. Néhány más nyelv támogatott a #local kategóriában.
What’s the most recommended way to buy a ledger?
Straight from ledger.com right
I’ve heard people say amazon etc can open up attack vectors