The Beginners Guide to EOS Tools

The EOS mainnet blockchain has officially launched. Now it is the time to check out and be familiar with the major apps and tools on EOS.

Voting

In EOS, all staked tokens are eligible to vote for the block producers (BP). Any unstaked tokens will not have voting power as these tokens are ready and able to transfer or use freely.

Staking/Unstaking

As EOS is built as a decentralized operating system, staking is basically helping to keep the system running by powering up either the RAM usage, CPU usage, storage and bandwidth usage.

When your tokens are staked for any one of these resources, you are in fact giving that much of that resources that you need. You can unstaked when you do not longer need those resources.

Staking for CPU and bandwidth is fairly straightforward, while staking for RAM is a little more complex (and requires a fee to be paid). So far, staking for storage space is still not available.

Leasing tokens

If you do have extra EOS tokens available, you always can consider leasing it to someone else. Some developer may prefer not to buy EOS tokens, but to lease them instead. Therefore, leasing your EOS tokens is one of way to genarate income on an ongoing basis.

Accounts and token transfer

Unlike other platforms, EOS uses accounts as well as private and public keys. In order to create a new account, you will need to have a certain amount of RAM.

To transfer your EOS tokens to another account, you will need their account name. You can't send tokens directly to a public key that doesn't have an account attached.

So far you should have an overall idea about how EOS system works, let's look at some of the great tools for using them.

Apps and Tools:

Scatter https://get-scatter.com

Scatter, by Nathan James, is probably one of the most useful tools in your EOS arsenal, as it allows you use a range of other tools without exposing your private keys.

If you've ever used Metamask for Ethereum, then it works in a similar way. You can access the EOS blockchain via a website and instead of directly inputting your keys Scatter signs the transactions for you (making it much safer).

It has two main components:

Keypairs:

Keypairs provide a way to import a public and private key into Scatter. You can have any number of EOS keypairs in Scatter.

You can also generate new keypairs in Scatter, but a keypair MUST be associated with an account, and you can't currently create a new account in Scatter. Generating keypairs and creating accounts is better done with other tools (see below).

Identities:

Identities in Scatter allow you to match your keypair (and associated EOS account) to a range of personal information such as name, email address, address etc.

This allows you to easily send these details to any website without the need to enter them each time.

PROS:

• Very flexible: can be used on a wide range of websites
• Supports unlimited EOS accounts/keypairs

CONS:

• Not very useful just by itself as doesn't have any inbuilt features (transfer, balance checking, etc.)
  
  

Genereos Toolkit (web app that integrates with Scatter) https://toolkit.genereos.io

The Genereos Toolkit is an amazing suite of tools created by Nathan Hempel from Genereos (a block producer candidate).

It has a range of great functions for both users and developers.

• Find account data based on account name or public key
• Create a new account (currently only possible if you have an existing account)
• Transfer EOS
• Stake and Unstake EOS for either CPU usage or Bandwidth (you can either stake for your own account or for someone else's account).
• Purchase or Sell RAM
• Vote for block producers
• Become a proxy (for voting purposes)
• Assign someone else as a proxy (for voting purposes)
• Bid on premium EOS names

PROS

• The widest selection of features of any of the tools

CONS

• Needs Scatter to use
  
  

EOS voter and wallet (desktop wallet) https://github.com/greymass/eos-voter

The EOS voter is another great app created by Team Greymass (another one of the EOS block producer candidates).

It has a range of functions:

• Voting for block producers (BP)
• Checking your EOS balance
• Staking and Unstaking your EOS tokens for CPU or bandwidth
• Transferring EOS tokens to another account

PROS

• Great voting feature
• Nice UI
• Runs on desktop so no need to enter private keys each time or use Scatter
• Very easy to stake/unstake

CONS

• Only supports one EOS account at a time (if you have multiple accounts you can't see them)
• Limited features compared to EOStoolkit
  
  

Simpleos (desktop wallet) https://github.com/eosrio/simpleos

SimplEOS is an EOS wallet with a great UI that also allows you to vote and others.

It's major function is to send and receive EOS tokens, and it has a built in contact list that easily allows you to do this.

However, it does not have any of the other functions of the above tools.

PROS

• Great user interface
• Ability to see multiple accounts at the same time (if they're linked to the same public key)
• Ability to easily see other EOS tokens such as those airdropped to you

CONS

• Limited functionality
  
  

Websites:

General EOS Toolkits: https://eostoolkit.io/home

New Account Creation (even for people without existing accounts): https://www.zeos.co/

Block explorer: http://eosnetworkmonitor.io/

Token leasing platform: https://chintai-eos.io/

Resource planner for dApps: https://www.eosrp.io/

Voting Portal: http://eosportal.io/chain/12/producers

Thanks for reading it. If you have more great EOS Tools to share with, please feel free to leave a message here.