Over the last few weeks, people have been asking us where we’ve disappeared and the answer is rather simple. Due to the striking success and the attention that IOTA received during this time, we had to put Tip IOTA on hold for various reasons. We have no doubt that long-term IOTA will be a huge success but gaining momentum too quickly had its drawbacks on the entire ecosystem.

The influx

When we made our first public announcement on Nov 6 last year, IOTA was priced just below $0.40 and over the next few weeks, it went as high as $5.80. The huge influx of new users and a lot more transactions put a massive strain on the network and during this period some people reported waiting for as long as a few days to get their transactions confirmed. In most cases, even re-attaching transactions to the Tangle didn’t help. We set up our own private nodes but unfortunately, it had no impact either.

This massive influx triggered some existing tip bots to be put on hold. Exchanges started charging for IOTA withdrawals due to the sheer quantity of transactions they had to process. The entire infrastructure was put through its paces and even though it had the exact same impact on us, we believed it was only for the better. It gave people a taste of how things are working and why some services, that are built on top of IOTA, cannot be free. It forced people to step back and to do their homework.

Now is the time

During our testing, we found ourselves in the same position as most of the users. We couldn’t get a big part of our transactions confirmed and it sucked. We had a working product that didn’t really work and it was out of our control. We never lost faith. Instead, we waited for it all out patiently and now is the right time to get back into it.

Why now? Some of the latest IOTA updates have made the entire transaction process a lot more reliable. Introduction of the “promote” feature almost eliminated our issues. The latest IOTA snapshot cleared away all of the old and useless transactions, and decongested the network. It was like a breath of fresh air. All of the tests we’ve run during the last few days were successful. All transactions were confirmed within a few minutes.

How can I participate in the beta?

We have set up a web form where you just have to leave your email, Discord ID and a brief explanation of how you could contribute. Ideally, we are looking for testers with a bit of a technical background in order to identify bugs more efficiently. We will hand-pick a hundred testers based on their applications. This process might take a while. In case you do not hear back from us, it’s likely we didn’t select you.

Something to keep in mind

As the name of this article suggests, Tip IOTA is still in beta. In case you're the one we end up selecting for this trial run, please don't use your personal seed/wallet with Giga IOTAs on it. Crete a new seed and treat it as your tipping wallet which holds only a small amount. No matter which way you look at things, it's the best practice going forward. It's also worth mentioning that you should never use any online seed generators. Generate a new seed/wallet locally on your own computer. Below are a few commands you can use.

Mac Terminal

cat /dev/urandom |LC_ALL=C tr -dc 'A-Z9' | fold -w 81 | head -n 1

Linux Terminal

cat /dev/urandom |tr -dc A-Z9|head -c${1:-81}

Keepass app for Windows or Mac

Video tutorial of KeepPass app

When are we going to release Tip IOTA to the general public?

If we do not find any major bugs that could potentially put us on a standstill, we will most likely release the Chrome extension in a week or two. There are no promises since the performance of the Tangle could hinder us once more. We'd like to stay optimistic. Lets hope for best outcome. 🤞

Check out our website. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Medium or join our Discord to receive the latest updates. If you are not looking to become a beta tester and would like to get notified when we launch, be sure to subscribe to our mailing list below.