If you are an artist and started to drop NFTs with a software wallet (like Temple or Kukai), this blog post is for you!
First, please read the first episode of our hardware wallet 101 series.
Use a hardware wallet for royalties
When you're an artist you have something more than collectors: royalties. You're earning royalties every time one of your piece is sold on secondary market. Your wallet address is set forever in the smart contract (except for some rare platforms that allow to change it). You can't change it if the security of your wallet is compromised (ex: someone stole your seed).
So my advice is simple: start with an hardware wallet from day 1.
Camille... I already started with a soft wallet
Now you have a hard decision to take:
- You're pretty sure your seed was kept safely (you can't be 100% sure!). So migrate your seed from your soft wallet to an hardware wallet and delete all your digital copy It's in general a very bad practice, but the least you can do if you want to continue to use this wallet.
- You're not sure your seed was safe. Buy an hardware wallet and create a new wallet with a new seed. You'll have to create a new profile on all the service you're using, but you'll be safe.
How to migrate from Temple or Kukai to an hardware wallet like Ledger
I did that mistake too. I minted multiple times on fxhash, hic et nunc and versum... I wanted to avoid changing wallet and having to recreate these profiles. My seed was saved in 1Password and use only in Temple on my computer. That's not safe enough, so I'm taking a risk.
If you're in the same situation, to do the migration you'll need 2 hardware wallets (in my case a Ledger Nano S and a Ledger Nano X). One to replace your software wallet (like Temple, Kukai...), another for everything else in the future. You have to use the first one as little as you can because you can't be sure the seed has not been compromised.
Step 1: Migrate your actual seed to an hardware wallet
- buy a simple hardware wallet (like a Ledger Nano S)
- initialize your hardware wallet with your actual seed
- write your seed physically (piece of paper, steel...)
- store it in a safe place (tips: small bank vault are not that expensive)
- test everything is working with your hardware wallet
- don't forget to reset it from the seed you wrote down to make sure you didn't make a mistake in copying it
- re-initialize your software wallet with a new seed and add you hardware wallet account to use it on your browser
- delete all the digital copies of you seed
Reminder: The seed used on this hard wallet may have been stolen and is not 100% safe at all. So do not create other wallets on this hard wallet.
Step 2: configure a safe hard wallet
You can follow the instructions of our first blog post for collectors. You will be able to put on this wallet all your precious things.
Camille Roux
Here we go! You're safer now 🎉
Disclaimer: I'm not a security expert, so do not trust me. Please read other resources before doing anything and let me know if I wrote a mistake.