Announcing EOS-Voter, an EOS Block Producer Voting Tool & Light Wallet

in #eos6 years ago (edited)

With the launch of EOS just around the corner, we wanted to release the current iteration of our EOS light
wallet into the world.

It was recently discussed in some articles, such as EOS Is Coming, If Anyone Can Figure Out How to Vote, that there is a big gap between the current release of software and the ability of the masses to get involved and actually use it. This highlights the issue of accessibility, since it is currently necessary to have an advanced understanding of EOS in order to be able to perform simple tasks such as voting for block producers.

Our mission at Greymass is to build tools to help everyone understand and use EOS, and further, bring this ease-of-use to the masses. We are proud to present the first of our planned EOS tools: an EOS Voting desktop application. Eventually this open source software will act as the foundation for our full GUI Light Wallet, which will have many other useful tools for EOS stakeholders -- but in the meantime, we wanted to get it in the hands of users for launch. Currently, it allows you to stake your EOS and vote for producers, which is the most important facet of securely launching and approving the main EOS network.

A Note on Security

It goes without saying that in the cryptocurrency world, security (specifically of your private keys) is a primary concern.

Since our voting tool is a standalone application, your keys will never leave your computer. Your keys (if you choose to store them), are encrypted with AES-256 encryption and stored on your own device. Operations are only signed locally, never externally. The only connection that the application makes is to your desired API node -- one that you choose yourself. This is a far more secure solution than voting through a website interface.

Finally, everything we do at @greymass is open source and always will be. You can check for yourself that everything we say is true -- as they say, “Trust, but verify.”
The source code is available here. We encourage advanced users to build it themselves!



EOS Block Producer Voting & Wallet

eos-voter is a limited-functionality release of an open-source light wallet that is being designed for the EOS blockchain. This application can be used to connect to a remote EOS API endpoint to perform producer voting actions and a few basic wallet commands.

Features

  • CPU/Bandwidth Staking: Stake your EOS as either Bandwidth or CPU. This grants rights to resource usage on the network, in addition to the combined amount staked conveying weight while voting for block producers.
  • Block Producer Voting: Select which block producers to support and cast your vote. Please note that the block producer voting UI is not a research tool; it is a simple interface that provides a secure way to vote.
  • Local Wallet: Set a password while importing your private key to create a local wallet. Your key will be encrypted locally using this password. This password will be required each time you need to unlock the wallet.
  • Temporary Usage: If you prefer not store your keys within the application, simply choose not to set a password. When the application quits, your key will be forgotten.

Security: Private Keys

When using eos-voter, all transactions are signed within the application and your key is never transmitted. If a local wallet password is specified, the application will also save and encrypt your key for future use, using AES-256 encryption.

Get eos-voter

Download the Latest Release

The latest release will always be available on the releases page of this repository:

https://github.com/greymass/eos-voter/releases

If you are a...

  • MacOS User: Download either the DMG (eos-voter-***.dmg) or ZIP (eos-voter-***-mac.zip) file.
  • Windows User: Download the EXE (eos-voter-***.exe) file.
  • Linux User: Download either the SNAP (eos-voter-***-_amd64.snap) or DEB (eos-voter-***-_amd64.deb) file

Build it Yourself

If you'd rather build the application yourself, please ensure you have nodejs, npm/yarn already installed locally.

Note: If you are configuring this Electron application under a Windows development environment, it will take some extra steps that are not outlined here.

git clone git@github.com:greymass/eos-voter.git eos-voter
cd eos-voter
yarn install

Then either:

  • MacOS: yarn package
  • Linux: yarn package-linux
  • Windows: yarn package-win
  • All: yarn package-all

The files built will be located in the releases folder within the root folder.

Running Development Mode

git clone git@github.com:greymass/eos-voter.git eos-voter
cd eos-voter
yarn install
yarn dev


Tutorial: How To Use the Voting Tool

Step 1: Connect to an API node

The first page you you will see when opening the app is a splash page that asks you for an API node. You can insert any trusted community API node here, or even use your own node if you have one.

For launch, Greymass will be hosting the API node https://eos.greymass.com, which you will be able to use here right away.

Note: eos.greymass.com will point to the main network when it comes online. If you want to test things on the Jungle testnet, you can connect to http://eos.jesta.us/.

Step 2: Input Your Credentials

Next up, you will need to input your credentials: specifically, your account name and your private key. Don’t know your account name? No problem, the app can look it up for you!

(Optional) Step 3: Save Your Encrypted Credentials

Once you have input your account name and private key, you can choose to have them saved and encrypted to your device so that you don’t have to re-enter them later. The next time you unlock your wallet, it will be ready to go! But if you don’t want to do this, no worries -- you’ll still be able to use your wallet by inputting your credentials at the beginning of each session.

(Optional) Step 4: Stake Some EOS

When the main network is launched, you may need to stake some of your EOS in order to vote for producers. To do this, head over to the Wallet tab and choose an amount of EOS to stake.

Note: the main network will have staked the majority of your EOS. You will likely not want to stake anything more!

Note: the combined amount of staked EOS across CPU and Bandwidth will determine the weight of your vote(s).

Step 5: Vote for Some Producers

Now you’re ready to vote for Block Producers. Head back to the Voting page, and select your favourite producers here.

(Optional) Step 6: Check out our Splash Page

You’re done! If you like, you can click on our logo in the top right corner. On this splash page, you’ll find more info about this tool, and about our organization.

If you like this application, don’t forget to vote for us as one of your selected, trusted Block Producers -- we’ll let you know our Block Producer name when the mainnet launches!



Credits

The development of this application is being led by members of the Greymass team in an effort to connect EOS with its stakeholders.
Everything is open source; we encourage the community to help contribute!

For discussion or questions about this app, feel free to join us on telegram.

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anyone from the community vouching for this? who's behind greymass?

I am, if that helps at all. It's actually based on the same foundation I'm building Anchor (my next Steem wallet) on.

yup that helps!

Jesta = value

And @jesta you are awesome :) Thank you for Vessel, thank you for Grey Wallet.

hey any chance this error im getting when trying to vote for BPC is common? :)

3050003: eosio_assert_message_exception
eosio_assert_message assertion failure

I am guessing that i cant vote yet? or did i not stake right? My 501 eos did come up as having all but 10 tokens stakes, so im just hoping its no big deal.
Anyway THANK you SO MUCH for making this! I just saw the news on the reddit eos that 11 big block producers endorsed this! so cool to see it looking soi much like vessel or chainbb or steemdb i feel liek such an insider having used your great software before this big app came out!

EDIT:
FIXED! I tried again and my votes went through !! here it is!!

what a relief :D I just had to "click to show' the agreement which i may not have done before, either that or it just sometimes has that error, feels similar to how vessel wallet would sometimes disconnect from a node but you could always click to reconnect, i feel like maybe the greymass node maybe was the reason i got thatt error? I looked it up on google only found one github request or report about it with some poor sukcer who pasted his entire code including his eosprivate key in there lol sucks for him but anyway i didnt find more than two reports of this error, i hope that was just stemming from my possible lack of clicking that button that expands the agreement you must agree to when you vote for block producers in this grey mass eos-voter

thanks again for creating this! Im so glad my vote finally went through after trying again a few hours later and after making sure to click expand on the agreement before sending the transmission! !

Yeah - this error is being returned by the node you're connected to (potentially ours) as some kind of error. We have gotten a couple reports of this happening and restarting the app seems to fix it. Glad you got through it and got to vote!

finally a new comment I can upvote at 100%! :D i was waiting for you to make a comment or post I could upvote! :D

And yeah I was just a lil irrationally scared that this error was somehow because I had maybe registered wrong or that my eos private key wasn't working for some reason and haha i was sooo relieved to see that error was nothing serious! :D

Anyway man if you started making dlive dtube or even youtube videos showing yourself testing our your own wallety talking about new features, wed all upvote it i bet! I know I would! anyway I know your busy but I think were all ready to just upvote any casuial fun posts you may have or casual ideas for steem products! You are really helping bring a LOT of EOS investors to steem this way man! its so cool! I gotta go get something to eat or id be sitting here wanting ti just type you out a whole essay all about everything ive been thinking about.,.. but ill let you get back to work :D

my mind is paralyzed with excitement and i forgot all the things i wanted to quickly mention to you, oh well just random ideas I have listed on my blog ... ill bid bot any potentiually serious ideas and youll see them when you see them :( I jhust think you deserve more publicity or your BRAND does and we should be finding users on steem like @web-gnar @desmond41 @artzanolino and other startup artists even @elgeko established ones who may want to help u make some EOS art well, elgeko already has :D and @stellabelle is and I just think GreyMass and your products deserve their own videos and images and art and fan clubs :D Ive watched you work over the year ive been here from chainBB to vessel and now this and I know you have even more great Apps coming, like a new steem wallet, so I just want to make sure you get the sorty of publicity you deserve and that Steemit inc makes sure to hire you like they did with @inertia or at least Block one with EOS should hire you!

I have to say I’m blown away by the thoughtful roadmap and your inspired, yet analytical approach that I think this whole space could greatly benefit from. The care you put into your dev initiatives and your views to the future are what will help make the distributed ledger space rise above and change the world. Thanks for all you do and... Keep on keepin’ on!

Crypto and Blockchain often lack good documentation and easy to use tools. Your post makes a great difference. Continue good work.

Hello current witness.

There are a couple of users acting bizarrely on Steemit.

The are @crigmarlo and @nice-steemer. Their steemd lists say that all they do is downvote people and their blogs are full of resteems. I got downvotes from both of these accounts on an 18-day-old post so I think they may be connected.

Hey, Man. I have vote you as BP. Keep on

cannot find your telegram... telegram is useful for communicating with us.

Interesting though, but I'm gonna stick to my Infinito wallet. It's enough, I don't see the voting tool is kinda helpful for crypto end-user like me and I think users also not allowed to vote.

Good stuff on this on the eosgo livestream today.

I vouched for you guys in the chat a couple times, it was neat to see y-day and today the names and faces we see here for so long.

There were a lot of positive comments on the stream, and yours was definitely the loudest of all those voices! :)

Way to support people making solid contributions to the space.

Thanks so much!

Thank you got it installed on Windows x64 ...

Thanks for putting this together! I will certainly check it out. Also wanted to pass this along to you

https://eostalk.io/eos-project/@officialfuzzy/bounty-post-your-open-source-eos-voting-portal-win-500-beyondbit-100-eosbit

This is fantastic, very easy to use and I like the smooth polished look of the UI! I've already used it to practice voting on the Jungle testnet. It's quite reassuring to see that my EOS was converted correctly from the ERC20 snapshot. Gives me peace of mind before the mainnet launch.

If anyone wants to try it out, feel free to connect using our BuildTeam test node on the Jungle testnet: http://51.15.227.98:8888

When will your API node be up?