Flare airdrop of Spark tokens to XRP holders faq

[BillyOckham]

Hi,  I’m not an expert but I do have a big mouth so I’ve spoken up a few times about the airdrop.  Eventually I got tired of typing the same things out so here is my version of a faq on the airdrop from a holders point of view.  I will update this initial post as new stuff comes to light or as I get the energy to add to, or improve on it.  Suggestions welcomed unless anatomically impossible.   

 

• Where should I go for information?

Not here obviously.      You should check this stuff out with the actual source below.  I could be wrong, they might change the plan, things mightn’t work as planned.  DYOR.

The source themselves:

https://flare.ghost.io/

https://flare.ghost.io/claiming-spark-faq/

 

• What do I have to do?

Nothing.  It’s an airdrop of what might turn out to be useless tokens.  But if you do want to get some of that free Spark magic Internet token thingy then you have until 11th June 2021 to claim them.

There are some complications though.

The first is your possible tax liability as pointed out by @cmbartley in a post in this thread.  USA article here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/shehanchandrasekera/2020/12/08/spark-token-airdrop-comes-with-a-tax-bill/?sh=7d0409cc6cfe

Only two groups will be eligible:

1. people who have a XRP ledger account (ie a ‘r’ address on a paper wallet, or a LedgerNano, or ToastWallet app, or Xumm app etc)   OR...  
2. anyone with XRP on any of the participating exchanges.   ( https://flare.xyz/supporting-exchanges/ )

Another complication is that the date those groups will be assessed at is the 12th Dec 2020.  So you must be in one of those two groups on that date to be eligible.

Also there is another, different-but-related airdrop happening after the Flare go-live by a different mob and it will need you to act within a certain week probably a month after flare starts up in 2021.  That’s the FlareFinance airdrop.  (I may cover that a bit in this faq but later on...   dunno much about it yet)

 

• So just holding XRP makes me eligible even if I haven’t done anything by the snapshot date?

Yes if you are in one of the two groups I mentioned above on the 12th Dec 2020.  But you must eventually claim by 11th June 2021.

 

 

• When is the Snapshot date?

The first validated XRP ledger with a timestamp greater than or equal to 00:00 GMT on 12th December 2020. 

 

 

• What do I do to claim?

Set the messageKey field on your XRP account with the special prefix and Flare address you want the tokens to go to.  Note that the XRP balance at the snapshot date (12th Dec 2020) is what matters.  If you claim two months later and the account is then empty,  you still get the amount that was in the snapshot. (It’s not exactly one for one but close)

 

 

• Sounds hard, is there an easy way?

Yep, just put your XRP on a participating exchange.   ( https://flare.xyz/supporting-exchanges/ )

Exchanges have risks though,  and you should carefully weigh up the pros and cons before doing that.  Take note especially that the air drop is going to be staged over two to three years so you will need the exchange to exist and continue participating for that period.

Fortunately for those that don’t want their Zerps on an exchange,  there are other easy ways.  They exist because XRP community devs have taken the trouble to create the tools for you to do the setup if you self-custody your XRP.

 

This was done by Weitse who is a well known dev in the XRP community and who created the XUMM wallet.  https://flare.wietse.com/

This was done by @DevNullProd : https://www.xrpchat.com/topic/35827-flexrp-a-tool-to-setup-an-xrp-account-for-the-flare-spark-airdrop/

 

This was done by @xrptoolkit :  https://docs.xrptoolkit.com/claim-spark-tokens

 

 

• How can I check that I am setup with a claim?

Use an explorer to look at your account and see if the address is there. Two are below.  Enter your public XRP address (the ‘r’ string) and it will show that XRP account.

BIThomp:     https://bithomp.com/

XRPscan:    https://xrpscan.com/

@xrpscam kindly said below 

Quote

You may use AltCoinTrader's wallet for example purposes: 

https://xrpscan.com/account/r34mWrX3cZCZpJEsqe1F6PNotREXwj1f3r

(so have a look at that example account and you will see the little flame icon on the set up Spark address)

Look in the account details, and if it is set, you will see the Flare address.   Check it’s correctly recorded the address.

(The XRP scan one I had forgotten the name so @Flintstone kindly advised.)

 

 

• What’s this Flare thing anyway?

Flare is a new network that hopes to be Etherium-but-better.  It wants to utilise the XRPLedger to power smart contracts in seconds (and cheaply) as opposed to Etherium’s issues with cost and speed.

So architecturally it is a second layer smart contract solution built to exist on top of the XRPLedger lower layer.  At some future point it will also connect to other chains.  It’s native token is Spark and that is what is being airdropped out to us to kick off the network.  The distribution is going to be staged over two to three years with an initial drop of 15% and more coming monthly after that.

 

• Why are we talking about Etherium addresses then?

The idea is that Etherium devs will be able to cut and paste their smart contract code directly from Etherium to Flare.  That’s the way they want to lure the devs...  look, your code runs faster and cheaper and the transactions are near instant.  Just move it here and it will run seamlessly.

To achieve that they have cloned the Etherium smart contract engine, which necessarily means that the addressing in Flare must be of the same format as Etherium.  So every valid Etherium address is also a valid Flare address on that seperate network.

Since the Flare wallets are not yet live,  the suggestion is you create a Etherium address using a Etherium wallet (eg MEW wallet) and simply use its address and private key.  It is critical that when you do that,  you record the 24 word phrase that will let you rebuild the private key over in the Flare wallet when that goes live.

 

 

• When do I get them?

The Spark that you are eligible for will be sent out over time.  At the go-live of the network (sometime in first half of 2021) those who have already ‘claimed’ by setting the messageKey with their desired Flare address will have 15% of their total entitlement sent to that address.  Every following month there will be a further allocation of a smaller amount.  If you claim some months after the go-live then you will get all the entitlement up to that point.  Eg 15% plus however many months worth.

 

 

• Who sends them out?

Thats going to be done by a smart contract running on the Flare network.  Presumably it will be fairly busy for a short while at go-live as it sends some Spark to all the eligible addresses.  
After that it will monitor the XRPLedger and detect any XRPLedger transactions setting the messageKey field to ‘claim’ Spark.  If the messageKey is set to a valid address (including the Spark tag prefix of a 22 and whole bunch of zeroes) then it will look up the snapshot amount of XRP for that account,  and then calculate the Spark entitlement (thus  far,) and transfer that into the Flare address specified.
 

 

• What are the risks?

There ARE risks any time you do anything with your XRP account.  The potential risk list is very long but I will give the prominent ones after saying this...  if you follow the directions (and even if you get them wrong) there is very little risk to your XRP.  Apart from the Exchange risk (which is a whole topic in itself) the biggest risk is you.     There is no risk from setting this messageKey field.  It can’t affect your balance.
 

If you self custody then you will be needing your secret key or needing to store a new secret key for the Flare address.  Now imagine you do that carefully in big writing on a sheet of paper.  While your phone is in your top pocket.  Is your phone camera hacked?  Are you certain?  That’s the kind of thing that is a risk here...  some thing you do allows a hacker to access or record your keys.  But that is not likely.  It’s really unlikely if you are careful.  Don’t use paper?  What about the risk of drive failure when that’s the only place your keys or passphrase are kept.  What about the file or photo (shudder...) that you stored it with...  what if that is hacked?

So the normal crypto key security issues arise here,  and you need to be careful, (even paranoid,) but not afraid.  
 

There is essentially no risk that the transaction you use to set the Flare address will harm your account.  
 

There is a small privacy risk if you were not intending that your Etherium transactions and your Flare and XRP transactions could be connected as being owned by one person.  But that is negated by using a brand new Etherium type address instead of the one you use for storing Ether.  Most of us won’t be too concerned about that I suspect...  but for those that are they will need to be aware.

The biggest risk of all is incorrectly using a Phished ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing ) website to perform this task.  Please only use known good links and bookmarks to access any of these tools or websites.

 

 

 

That’s it for the first draft.  I will add and update and improve(??) it over next few days.

Edited December 10, 2020 by BillyOckham

[BillyOckham]

Hey does anyone know of a demo wallet that is set up for Flare so that I can use it in the explorer links to show how it should look?

Also what explorers do we want to link to.  I always use Bithomp...  but I know others exists and I’ve used them but can’t recall their links.

[Neurotoxin]

Excellent thread, I think it’s pretty complete and straightforward. Thank you. 

[Jungerns001]

As I'm new to Crypto after finally taking the plunge so please be gentle lol

In short I hold XRP via Coinbase and I'm from the UK

Will I be credited (or likely to be) these flare tokens at some point in the future ??  Now the question I further have is why isn't XRP taking off price wise in the interim prior to the 12th December if that is the case....??

[XRPwatch]

2 hours ago, Jungerns001 said:

As I'm new to Crypto after finally taking the plunge so please be gentle lol

In short I hold XRP via Coinbase and I'm from the UK

Will I be credited (or likely to be) these flare tokens at some point in the future ??  Now the question I further have is why isn't XRP taking off price wise in the interim prior to the 12th December if that is the case....??

The price has taken off, it was much lower a couple of weeks ago. You missed it. It may creep up a little on Friday but it's mostly priced in already.

If you are buying now, prepare to dump just after midnight on Saturday.

 

[Panther]

@BillyOckham

 

Thanks for the FAQ answers. I really appreciate it, as I am also a newbie in this crypto world. Anyway, just a couple of questions.....you stated the following: ' The distribution of Spark is going to be staged over two to three years, with an initial drop of 15% and more coming monthly after that.'

So am I to assume that I would not receive the full amount of Spark tokens that I am due until around 2-3 years time? Therefore I will not receive 100% of the Spark that I am due on 11th June 2021? The airdrop will be progressive over 2-3 years, after which I will then have the full amount that I am due? Is that right?

Also, if the above is correct, then what about if I sold some of my XRP AFTER the snapshot on 12th December 2020? Would I still receive the correct amount of Spark over those 2-3 years directly correlating to the amount of XRP that I had on the 12th December 2020 and not correlating to my lesser amounts of XRP AFTER the 12th December 2020??

 

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance

[Flintstone]

On 12/8/2020 at 5:09 AM, BillyOckham said:

Hey does anyone know of a demo wallet that is set up for Flare so that I can use it in the explorer links to show how it should look?

Also what explorers do we want to link to.  I always use Bithomp...  but I know others exists and I’ve used them but can’t recall their links.

 

https://xrpscan.com/ Is another Explorer, but I’m a sucker for Bithomp’s GUI - plus Warbler is always around to answer any questions.

Edit: Ooh, so is @xrpscan. Well hello  

Edited December 9, 2020 by Flintstone

[Flintstone]

27 minutes ago, Panther said:

@BillyOckham

 

Thanks for the FAQ answers. I really appreciate it, as I am also a newbie in this crypto world. Anyway, just a couple of questions.....you stated the following: ' The distribution of Spark is going to be staged over two to three years, with an initial drop of 15% and more coming monthly after that.'

So am I to assume that I would not receive the full amount of Spark tokens that I am due until around 2-3 years time? Therefore I will not receive 100% of the Spark that I am due on 11th June 2021? The airdrop will be progressive over 2-3 years, after which I will then have the full amount that I am due? Is that right?

Also, if the above is correct, then what about if I sold some of my XRP AFTER the snapshot on 12th December 2020? Would I still receive the correct amount of Spark over those 2-3 years directly correlating to the amount of XRP that I had on the 12th December 2020 and not correlating to my lesser amounts of XRP AFTER the 12th December 2020??

 

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance

Both of your assumptions are correct  

 

@BillyOckham If you want to elaborate on these questions, I’ll delete this post to remove clutter. Same goes for the screenshots.

Edited December 8, 2020 by Flintstone

[BillyOckham]

1 hour ago, Flintstone said:

Both of your assumptions are correct  

 

@BillyOckham If you want to elaborate on these questions, I’ll delete this post to remove clutter. Same goes for the screenshots.

Ah mate your answers are always appreciated.  More frequent and more helpful than mine all over the place...  so no, I would never want to remove yours...   this thread can grow or not and that doesn’t really upset anything in my opinion.  I can just keep editing the first post so it’s very easy to get to if needed.

 

The faq is first post and any discussion can help me update and improve it.  I will add your excellent images and suggestion to the faq later today.  Thanks very much for your efforts and knowledge sharing. 

[BillyOckham]

1 hour ago, Panther said:

@BillyOckham

 

Thanks for the FAQ answers. I really appreciate it, as I am also a newbie in this crypto world. Anyway, just a couple of questions.....you stated the following: ' The distribution of Spark is going to be staged over two to three years, with an initial drop of 15% and more coming monthly after that.'

So am I to assume that I would not receive the full amount of Spark tokens that I am due until around 2-3 years time? Therefore I will not receive 100% of the Spark that I am due on 11th June 2021? The airdrop will be progressive over 2-3 years, after which I will then have the full amount that I am due? Is that right?

Also, if the above is correct, then what about if I sold some of my XRP AFTER the snapshot on 12th December 2020? Would I still receive the correct amount of Spark over those 2-3 years directly correlating to the amount of XRP that I had on the 12th December 2020 and not correlating to my lesser amounts of XRP AFTER the 12th December 2020??

 

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance

Thanks for kind words and the question...  Fred has covered it I think.  I will add your question into the faq so your input will be helpful to others. Thanks.

[HenrySeldom]

Once we get the spark tokens (via the Ethereum address in self custody), how do we access said spark tokens to send them to an exchange or another address? If you have a Ledge Nano (for instance), will that be part of the Ethereum wallet functions? 

[BillyOckham]

4 hours ago, Panther said:

Therefore I will not receive 100% of the Spark that I am due on 11th June 2021?

I just noticed that you are slightly in error on this point.  You are not due them at that date...  that’s merely the last day the claim of Spark can be made.

I will put a bit about the distribution into the faq.

[BillyOckham]

5 minutes ago, HenrySeldom said:

Once we get the spark tokens (via the Ethereum address in self custody), how do we access said spark tokens to send them to an exchange or another address? If you have a Ledge Nano (for instance), will that be part of the Ethereum wallet functions? 

Good question that I haven’t addressed.  I will add that in.  Short answer is that you will use a Flare enabled wallet.  Ledger look to be creating one as well as other apps etc are being, or already are created.

[Teslaza]

Thank you for this comprehensive FAQ @BillyOckham.

 

Just a quick question regarding the whole ETH address thing. Still struggling to wrap my head around it.

 

I have a primary ledger nano s on which I have all my XRP. I've went and created/installed an Ethereum wallet on a secondary ledger nano s via the Ledger Live appplication.

I then used my 1st device with xrptoolkit to sign the messagekey of my xrp account with the ETH address that I generated on the second device - with all the prefixes etc in the correct format.

 

1) Am I correct in assuming that once the tokens have been distributed and I've installed the flare wallet on my 2nd nano, that I will have the spark tokens "waiting" there?

2) So what happens on the Flare network side when they look at the snapshot after it has been taken. Do they go, ok here is an ETH formatted address for this XRP wallet, so let's create this wallet on the Flare network with the equivalent amount of spark tokens, or does that address already exist on their network and they just set the amount for the existing wallet on their side? 

3) Following from the question above, I take it the same 24 phrase/seed will generate the exact same ETH address for both an Ethereum and Flare wallet correct?

EDIT - lol, I left out the most important question I had :

4) It shouldn't matter that the ETH address/wallet is on another device than the XRP address/wallet which contains the messagekey right?

Edited December 8, 2020 by Teslaza

[BillyOckham]

1 hour ago, Teslaza said:

Thank you for this comprehensive FAQ @BillyOckham.

 

Just a quick question regarding the whole ETH address thing. Still struggling to wrap my head around it.

 

I have a primary ledger nano s on which I have all my XRP. I've went and created/installed an Ethereum wallet on a secondary ledger nano s via the Ledger Live appplication.

I then used my 1st device with xrptoolkit to sign the messagekey of my xrp account with the ETH address that I generated on the second device - with all the prefixes etc in the correct format.

 

1) Am I correct in assuming that once the tokens have been distributed and I've installed the flare wallet on my 2nd nano, that I will have the spark tokens "waiting" there?

2) So what happens on the Flare network side when they look at the snapshot after it has been taken. Do they go, ok here is an ETH formatted address for this XRP wallet, so let's create this wallet on the Flare network with the equivalent amount of spark tokens, or does that address already exist on their network and they just set the amount for the existing wallet on their side? 

3) Following from the question above, I take it the same 24 phrase/seed will generate the exact same ETH address for both an Ethereum and Flare wallet correct?

EDIT - lol, I left out the most important question I had :

4) It shouldn't matter that the ETH address/wallet is on another device than the XRP address/wallet which contains the messagekey right?

All good questions.  But they are resolved once you understand what is really happening with a wallet.

 

Wallet is a really bad term for what they are.  It’s confusing.  Forgive me if this is a long ramble...   but I think it might be worth the walk.

(There may be exceptions to what I’m going to say, and some is a simplification, but it’s true for almost all cases)

A cryptocurrency uses two technologies that are relevant here.  Cryptography,  and cloud (or network) technology.  So let’s talk about the cloud aspect.  The reason that you can look at a public address balance, and so can I,  is because the information is distributed all over the network.  A bit differently to, say, a web page.  The ‘coins’ live out there on the cloud.

They are NOT on the ledger nano USB stick.  They are not in the phone app.  They are recorded in the ‘blocks’ (called ‘ledgers’ in XRP case) that make up the block chain that is widely distributed across many nodes.

So when you say will they be waiting for me in my ledger stick then no... they are not,  and never will be.

The second part of this that’s relevant is the cryptography.  Public private key technology means that the cryptocurrency network can check that the key used to encrypt the transactions sent to the chain are validly signed by the owning private key for that account.  So no one other than a holder of that account’s private key can ever get a valid transaction for the account submitted.

And it’s that private key that is what is actually stored on the ledger Nano or in the XUMM app.  Not the XRP, just the private key.

So when you ask about does the address exist...  yeah it kinda does...  it’s a near infinite set of key pairs that ‘exist’ in the mathematical sense,  but whether they are ever used is down to whoever creates a key pair in a toolset (wallet) for interacting with the network.  If you create a key pair and tell Flare about it in the claim process then when they are ready they will put the distribution amounts into that account.  (An ‘account’ in this sense is just the public key address)

So.  Questions...

1.  Sorta,  but a) they are not really in that wallet and b) you’ll only get that portion that’s been distributed at that time.

2.  As discussed, the address already exists in the mathematical sense but it is not used as an account until someone (in this case the Flare distribution smart contract) funds it with some tokens.

3.  Yes, because Flare are using the Etherium addressing/encryption pair standard,  so that particular private key is always paired with that public key.  Each network is entirely seperate though, and doesn’t ‘know’ about the other. (At least at this stage of the game)

4.  Absolutely no matter at all.  As discussed,  the XRPLedger lives out on the cloud.  When Flare smart contracts are looking at that ledger they don’t know or care how many wallet apps, or wallet hardware devices, can access that cloud account.  The cloud account is the source of truth,  and the various wallets just securely hold the key, and can also look out at the network cloud to see the transaction history and the current balance etc.

 

Hope this was helpful, not too boring, and not confusing.  Although I suspect it was at least the latter two.