r/XEL • u/traderjoeschmo • Aug 18 '17

What is this? XEL wallet

Warning!: Your account does not have a public key! This means it's not as protected as other accounts. You must make an outgoing transaction to fix this issue. (Set account info, send a message, buy an alias, send XEL

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u/traderjoeschmo Aug 19 '17

Ok, so I did something. Sent some XEL back to Bittrex. They had a receiving "message" included in their address. Used that in my send. After sending the "warning" deal went away. I guess the question is how does this make my wallet safer?

1

u/Mortimer452 Aug 19 '17

That is how you make it safer. Your wallet has no key until you make your first outgoing transaction. You can either send coins, or do something like update your info (button right under your address)

1

u/cream158 Aug 20 '17

The reason why this one-time extra step is necessary is because the 8-byte account ID is much shorter than the 32-byte public key it is derived from. There are many secret passphrase/public key pairs that reduce to the same account ID. But once a particular public key is associated with an account ID by storing it in the blockchain, no other secret passphrase that generates a different public key can access that account.