How to Store IOTA – The Best Wallet to Send and Receive IOTA…

IOTA Wiki

IOTA is a cryptocurrency created specifically for the Internet of Things (IoT). A little background: in the next seven to eight years, an estimated 75 billion devices will be connected to one another via the Internet.

Each of these devices will interact to make the world a better, more seamless place for us. To enable this interoperability, IoT devices must be able to do micro-transactions to pay one another in a frictionless manner. These micro-transactions are the raison-d’être of IOTA.

The technological breakthrough behind IOTA is the “Tangle,” which is a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Tangle solves both the scalability issue and the transaction fees issues faced by most blockchain cryptocurrencies.

In Tangle, a transaction can only be done if the user approves two previous transactions. So, the act of making a transaction and validating transactions are coupled.

What’s remarkable about IOTA is that, as the number of users increases, the speed of transactions increases too (as opposed to blockchain cryptocurrencies, where the opposite is true).

Also, as the proof of work is being done by users themselves, there is no need to pay any fees.

In addition to the scalability and the fee-less structure, IOTA scores over other blockchain cryptocurrencies by being completely decentralized (in the true sense) and modular. No wonder it is rapidly climbing up the cryptocurrency charts.

This article focuses on IOTA wallets and how to store IOTA. But, if you want to know more about what IOTA is and how it functions, go to our more detailed IOTA wiki here.

Factors to Select Best IOTA Wallet

An IOTA wallet is a software program that stores private and public keys and interacts with various exchanges to enable cryptocurrency transactions and allows users to monitor their IOTA balance.

If you want to use IOTA, one of the first decisions you will have to make is which wallet you will be using to store your IOTA and make transactions. There are several types of IOTA wallets that provide different ways to store and access your IOTA. So, it might be a good idea to know the factors to select the best IOTA wallet.

Operating System: Some wallets for PC are available for every major operating system, such as “Windows,” “OSX,” and “Linux.” “Mac” users need a different wallet. There are also different wallets for smartphones and mobile devices.

Ease of Use: The user interface of wallets is a very important factor. Does the wallet have a conventional “burger” navigation, or a more dynamic tab navigation system with more space to accommodate new features without compromising existing features?

Ease of Installation: The difficulty of setup varies with different wallets. For example, while mobile wallets are easy to set up, a headless node wallet is difficult to set up.

Infrastructure Needs: Some wallets need to be connected to neighbors with a static IP, whereas others just need one local console.

Security: Your wallet allows you to access your coins using private and public keys. The public key is used to receive IOTAs and can be published anywhere without a risk to security. Private keys, on the other hand, act like a password to send coins, and hence are crucial to guard your wallet’s security. Security levels differ from wallet to wallet.

Upgradability: Does the wallet have a facility to add additional features? Is it fully customisable, allowing the user to select the features they want to?

Cross-Platform Deployment: Will the wallet be available for both desktop and mobile?

Some of these factors, like customizability, might still be in their Beta phases. So, while selecting the best IOTA wallet to suit your needs, keep in mind that there is no “perfect” wallet, as different users will have different needs. As a general rule of thumb, each wallet is a unique compromise between convenience and security. The more convenient a wallet, the less secure it generally is.

Best Wallet to Send and Receive IOTA

A Light Wallet is the easiest and the best wallet to send and receive IOTA coin. You have two options to run one: GUI Light Wallet and Nostalgia Light Wallet

GUI Light Wallet: This Light Wallet is integrated into the graphic user interphase (GUI) and enables you to use IOTA without the need to find neighbors. After selecting the Light Wallet option, you can simply connect to a public node.

Nostalgia Light Wallet: If you don’t want to use the GUI and you don’t want to run a full node on your computer, you can connect Nostalgia Light Wallet to a Pow-enabled server on which IOTA is running. All you have to do is open the nostalgia.html file in an html editor. Public Light Wallet Servers that are not Pow- enabled will not allow this. (Source: “Wallet Knowledge Base,”  IOTA Support, last accessed December 13, 2017.)

Analyst Take on Best Wallet to Send and Receive IOTA

The GUI Light Wallet is my preferred wallet for storing IOTA. I like it because it is the simplest and fastest way to get an IOTA wallet up and running, and—unlike  Nostalgia—it doe not require specific enabling of servers.

While using a Light Wallet, you are basically interacting either with your own hosted full node or you’re interacting with the full node of a third party or Light Wallet provider.

If you are interacting with your own full node, it’s all hunky-dory. But, if you are interacting with a third party’s full node, you might be worried about security and safety of funds.

The good news is, even though you are interacting with a third party, your private key (seed) never leaves your possession, so the third party cannot steal your funds. However, if your usage requires high security, it might be a good idea to use a quorum of Light Wallet providers instead of a single third party.

All things considered, the GUI Light Wallet is the best wallet to store IOTA (until something better comes along).