The birth of so many little decentralised applications and agents, coming right up!

In just a handful of days from now, Fetch.ai will launch the first iteration of its main network. For the first time, real, native Fetch tokens will exist and they will not be test tokens. So, given there will be native tokens, just what happens to your ERC20 tokens? Will they be lost? Will they be converted? Is there anything to do, worry about or fear?

Let’s get any mainnet token worries tucked up in bed with a mug of hot cocoa, to drift off to a comfortable sleep free of any bad dreams: there is neither anything you need to do, nor is there anything to worry about. Your tokens are safe. Fetch.ai native tokens will coexist with ERC20 tokens in a one-to-one relationship for a long, long time to come — at least half a year, and this will continue for as long as it is beneficial to the community.

Coexistence is important. It ensures that you can use your existing favourite exchanges, your hardware wallets, your web-integrated wallets such as MetaMask and everything you’re used to doing with your FET tokens, precisely as you did before. But if you are building real, main network applications, you can convert ERC20 FET into native FET and vice versa. We envision developers and users of applications, agents and AI-powered smart contracts to maintain a small amount of native FET in order to get things done, transferring backwards and forwards as is applicable. It’s also important because no new software project of this magnitude is perfect the first time around, and coexistence ensures stable functionality of all the plumbing around Fetch for all users and supporters. During 2020, Fetch.ai will create several tools to help developers building applications on the mainnet. We will also work with hardware wallet providers to build and release native FET support to make the native token safer and easier to use as time goes on.

Let’s first touch on wallet and application things that we’re going to be developing to help with mainnet use. We’ll then talk about the conversion process to and from native tokens. Amongst all sorts of other goodies, we’re going to be building:

Simple web-based wallet for the native network, a little like a mini-MetaMask, to allow users to interact with web applications in the way you do now with, for example, our staking mechanism (see https://staking.fetch.ai)

Greatly expanded block explorer which will allow for the deployment and interaction with AI-powered smart contracts and the detailed viewing of transactions, contracts and more

Testnet mode for creating test native tokens. As well as the mainnet, we’re also updating the testnet so that you can easily create test FET tokens and test deployments. This is particularly useful for anything involving AI, such as neural networks

However, the most important tool we are building will allow you to easily convert ERC20 FET into native FET tokens and back again. The ERC20 to native will be the first part of this, and it will be closely followed by the ability to convert native tokens back into ERC20. Whilst the process may be a touch “manual” initially, we are also busy beavering away constructing a user interface, just as we did for our staking system, so that everyone can easily transfer tokens to and from the main network. We are putting the finishing touches to the documentation that’ll make it easy to create native wallets (from the command line initially, but soon from a web interface) so you’ll be ready to roll. And, of course, our team will be here to support you every step of the way.

We will be releasing the first part to coincide with the launch of the mainnet later this month, alongside details of how to use it. If you’re a developer, please sign up to our Developer Slack channel to talk to us directly if you would like to know additional details.

Our initial mainnet release is an incredible milestone to have reached in such a short period of time, especially given the enormous complexity of designing and implementing a project of such magnitude. We’re hugely looking forward to rolling out a bigger, better, more decentralised and increasingly stable network in the coming months. Making our native tokens real is step one in a new era where agents and AI-powered smart contracts can transform the digital economy. Here’s to 2020!