IOTA Snapshot 28th January 2018. How to prepare and not lose your IOTA.

The next IOTA snapshot is happening on the 28th January. If you have been involved in the IOTA community for a while you will constantly be hearing about people losing there balance. This often happens due to snapshots.

Whats a snapshot?

A snapshot in short is like a photo of the network and where everyone's IOTA is. Rather than have nodes save all those details (computers that run the network) they just reference the photo and it helps speed the network up.

Every wallets balance will display zero upon opening. Don't fear, if you prepare you can get it back in under a minute. If you don't prepare it may take days if your unlucky.

When you login after a snapshot you have to attach to the tangle the same amount of times as addresses you have generated. This is why it can take days, say if you have 1000 addresses. For me I generated a new seed because that would be quicker than reattaching 34 times.

So What do you need to do?

-Log into your wallet, go to the history, click on addresses, make a note of the amount of addresses used and the what the first and last address are (I took a picture and copied the address into sticky notes). Also note your balance.

-If you have a large number of address you may want to generate a new seed and send you IOTA there. I takes about 30 seconds of manual time per address to recover so for ten address that's 5 minutes of tedious clicking. You can decide if its worth making a new seed or not. Then do the first step for the new seed if you have one.

What about after the snapshot?

When you restore you wallet you now know how many times you have to attach to the tangle (amount of address you had previously) to get you balance back and often part of a balance will be restored someway through the process so you also know not to stop there. You can also check the first and last address match to ensure your using the right seed and have reattached the correct number of times if you don't explicitly count.

Short version

If in doubt just make a new seed and send everything there before Sunday. Then reattach to tangle a few times on Monday and you should have your IOTA.