Newbie and need help with spark tokens!

[YESHUA17]

Hello XRP community, I was able to make the deadline for the snapshot of my ledger to claim spark tokens but I need help with actually claiming them and what to do with my ledger nano X. Also where will they show up when they do appear? I appreciate any and all help!! Thanks, Dan

[BillyOckham]

On 12/8/2020 at 1:29 PM, BillyOckham said:

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 

(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.