Hello, and welcome to Greymass’ monthly progress update! If you’d like to see what we accomplished back in July, please check out the previous update. Here’s what we’ve been up to since then:
Anchor Updates
Updates for Desktop
The desktop version of Anchor recently got some love from our developers, with a V1.3.5 update that:
- Fixed a bug that was affecting multi-signature transactions
- Updated the camera permissions for M1 macs, so that the webcam can now be used to scan the QR code on an owner key certificate
- Resolved issues during owner key certificate generation
- And of particular interest to developers, added support for Jungle4
QUICK TIP: If you use Anchor and you’ve never printed your owner key certificate (and written down the words that go with it), now is a great time to do so! The certificate prevents the worst-case crypto nightmare we’ve all heard about — where you lose access to your wallet and all the funds in it, and can never get them back. 😱 Print the certificate, write down the words, store it in a safe place, and you can sleep easy knowing this will never happen to you.
Updates for Android
Anchor for Android has also leveled up this month (to Version 0.41), with improvements like:
- Updates to the transaction prompt and recovery page screens, so that users have a better experience
- Upgrading multiple processes including the ricardian contract cards rendering, migration flow and signing requests
- An update to handle signing requests urls that use the “esr-anchor” scheme, so that we no longer need to use the “esr” scheme that is used by other wallets
- Bug fixes and the removal of some project dependencies that are no longer needed
Also, if you’re on Anchor Android version 0.40 or higher, you may have recently gotten a prompt about key migration. This is an expected result of recent updates and is not a scam. But with the recent wallet hacks in the crypto community, we completely understand users’ concerns and wanted to spend a minute explaining what this prompt is about.
In this update, we’ve made structural changes to how Anchor uses the Secure Enclave*. These changes will allow for app improvements like a higher number of private keys per account, and more secure transaction signing protocols.
*A Secure Enclave is a tiny piece of hardware in modern smartphones that’s designed to securely store info like your fingerprints and passwords. Anchor stores your private keys there because it’s the safest part of your phone.
So what should you do when this prompt pops up?
- First, click OK to continue. At this point, Anchor will adjust the aliases created by the Secure Enclave to encrypt your keys to a new format that will allow for a greater number of private keys per account.
- You will then be prompted to authenticate via your preferred method (PIN or biometrics) for each set of keys you have stored in Anchor.
- Once the migration has completed, you will be brought to the regular home screen of Anchor for Android.
The Key Migration will only need to happen once and should not appear for any other reason. If you experience something contrary to the process listed above, please contact our support team at support@greymass.com or reach out via our Support Portal.
Unicove Updates
While Unicove hasn’t been updated for users this month, we’ve been at work behind the scenes. The most exciting thing we’re working on is an “Earn” section for Unicove, which will give users a dedicated place to earn a return on their tokens (some readers may remember that we were working on designs for this back in May, and we’re now writing the code for it).
We’ll be building capability for users to stake to REX at first, but in the long run we intend to provide multiple options so that users across all networks can benefit from this feature.
On a more technical level, we’ve also been working to update the systems that Unicove uses to get its token balance information. The system is being adapted to support multiple API providers to make it work better across different ecosystems.
And finally, when we asked Aaron what else was going on in Unicove development, he said “Checkboxes! We’re making a checkbox component. Oooo exciting!” So you can look forward to that. ☑️
Support Improvements
Tony has been hard at work this past month, answering user questions and creating guides for our Support Portal in his spare time. If you have any questions about creating an account with Anchor for Desktop or how to use the Keychain Viewer in Anchor for Android, then his latest step-by-step guides have you covered. He’s also working on a guide for setting up Ledger within Anchor, and a series of shorter guides that will address specific areas of the app, so you’ll be seeing those soon as well.
And if you have any questions in the meantime, you can always reach out to Tony directly through the Support Portal or at support@greymass.com.
Growing the Team
Greymass is growing, and this month we welcomed aboard Dean Sallinen! Dean is a front-end developer who’s obsessed with crafting user experiences that go above and beyond attractive interfaces. He relies on his history in other industries to empathize with a wide gamut of users and create products that are fast, simple to understand, and easy to use. He’s excited to start bringing the new Greymass website to life.
We’re also looking for new team members, so if you’re a product manager, API developer, or SDK developer, we’d love to chat! You can check out the job descriptions here. We promise we’re a fun group to work with — we even play bingo during meetings!
And that’s all we have for now. If you have any feature requests for Anchor or Unicove (or suggestions for an EOS Fireside bingo board…), you can find us in Discord or at hello@greymass.com.
