“I am sorry, we are not “traditional banks””

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When you have feedback with the decentralized digital wallet customer service, you often hear this sentence: " I am sorry, we are not a traditional bank ."

Many people are wondering, what does this sentence mean? Why are these customer service always emphasizing that they are not traditional banks? It is unlikely that you will hear this when communicating with a centralized wallet or trading platform customer service. This is to say from the way we set the mindset of the traditional banking service system in our lives.

In modern life, people can't do without various online payment tools, such as bank APP, Alipay and WeChat. We can contact customer service and solve problems in case of various problems such as transfer or payment. Therefore, when users are exposed to these decentralized digital wallets, they will take it for granted that the service scope provided by the two customer service providers is the same. These services include: managing accounts, withdrawing or freezing unusual transactions or funds, and undertaking asset losses due to unexplained reasons.

It is this kind of thinking that causes most people to come up with the idea that someone will help me manage my account and keep my assets safe. Even if I made mistakes due to negligence, they can help me recover my losses. And such an idea is completely wrong. Creating a decentralized wallet is equivalent to building your own bank. No one but you can control your assets. This means that you will take full responsibility for the security of your assets. In the communication between the imToken customer service team and the user for more than 3 years, only a very small number of users really realized this. For example, in the decentralized wallet, there is no function of using mobile phone number or email login, which makes many users confused: I changed my mobile phone, how to continue using the previous wallet? At the same time, it also revealed a problem: the industry is growing wildly, user education has not kept up, and the user's perception of the blockchain is seriously insufficient.

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Imagine the user complaining: I transferred the wrong address, why can't you help me back? Is there a problem with your system? When you explain to the user: This is not a system problem, but a feature of the blockchain "irreversible". It sounds like a perfunctory, but it does, because no one can change the transfer records that have occurred in the chain. Although the "limited" customer service support has made many users unhappy, the decentralized wallet really allows users to achieve "inviolability of private property." At the end of the Wanxiang Blockchain Summit, the director of the Central Bank's Digital Money Institute, Yao Ju, came to the concept of “self-finance”. One of the most important characteristics of “self-finance” is that users control their digital identity and assets.

Centralized wallet or trading platform, such as currency security, fire currency, Gate.io and other centralized exchanges, they have the user wallet private key, completely control the user's wallet assets, so they can provide users similar to traditional banking Asset hosting services. Decentralized wallets like imToken and MEW give the control of the wallet to the user completely, which requires the user to improve their security awareness and manage the wallet. Because once the wallet is stolen by others and causes property damage, these decentralized wallet providers cannot help you recover your losses like a traditional bank. The reason why the decentralized wallet customer service can say: "We are not traditional banks" is not only because they are not related to traditional banks, but from the bones , they are different from traditional banks because:

There is no account here.

When using a decentralized digital wallet, you are not allowed to enter any personal information to create a wallet. So there is no user profile or the account needs to be managed. At the same time, your password is stored locally on the mobile phone and is not uploaded to the server of the wallet service provider. Therefore, the wallet customer service can not help you to modify the wallet settings, reset the password, or even "change" the wallet balance. It is also because there is no personal information corresponding to the wallet address, so the user has suffered fraud and caused property damage. Although it is possible to query the address to which the token is transferred through the block browser, it is impossible to identify the identity of the fraudster.

To put it another way, only you can control this wallet, and no one else can interfere with your transfer or freeze your assets. You don't need any other person or agency's authorization to initiate a transaction, nor will it be affected by a disruption to the service caused by the banking system. Changes in the global stock market or policy environment will not affect your management through a decentralized wallet. Your digital assets.

No assets stored here

What is the blockchain? To put it simply, it is a public account that is maintained by everyone. Your wallet data is recorded on this ledger. These decentralized wallet service providers use technology to present wallet data to you. In this process, your assets are not “transferred” into the wallet and are still recorded in the ledger on the block.

Digital assets are not stored on a server or in a bank-like safe. For example, if you buy a hardware wallet, it is not that you store the digital currency in it, but in a safer way. Manage your assets. Decentralized wallets use only different techniques and logic to help you manage your assets. This means that the decentralized wallet does not store and store your assets.

Hackers usually don't focus on attacking these decentralized wallets because the cost of the attack is high, and hackers try to focus on the centralized digital service platform. Even if a wallet is difficult to access due to a malicious attack by a hacker, the user can continue to manage the asset by importing the private key into another decentralized wallet by keeping the wallet private key.

Compliance with blockchain rules

Unlike the traditional banking system, the blockchain is an open distributed ledger that anyone can read the data on the ledger. As long as someone knows your wallet address, you can check every transfer record in your wallet. Moreover, due to the "irreversible" nature of the blockchain, no one can cancel or withdraw the transfer that has already occurred, and it is even less likely to falsify or erase the transfer records already recorded on the block. So if you enter the wrong payment address or are defrauded when you transfer money, the damage will not be recovered. Some centralized digital service platforms will purchase special insurance to deal with user property losses caused by platform problems. But they can't recover the stolen assets, and they can only make up for the loss of users through compensation.

It is also because of the nature of the blockchain itself that no matter where we are, we can initiate a transfer without any amount or third party restrictions. The speed of the transaction arrival depends on the congestion of the whole network. Generally, it can be reached in a few minutes. Transfers have far more advantages than traditional bank cross-border wire transfers in terms of efficiency and cost.

Only you can manage your assets

In the traditional banking system, in addition to yourself, the bank can also control your account, and the bank has greater authority over this account. The assets you deposit in the bank can be frozen, and the transfer function may be subject to various restrictions. Your credit score in the bank may seriously affect your life. In the worst case, just like the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008, the investment bank represented by Lehman Brothers in the United States went bankrupt, and the assets of customers were not guaranteed.

There is a classic line in the Spider-Man movie: "With great power comes great responsibility."

In the decentralized digital asset wallet, only you have the right to control the assets of your wallet. Once your wallet private key is leaked due to improper storage or operation, the resulting loss of assets can only be borne by you.

" I am sorry, we are not a traditional bank. " When you meet the decentralized wallet customer service reply next time, you can understand what they want to say after reading and reading this article.

Reference: "What Crypto Wallets Means When They say "We Are Not A Bank"

Original author: @Katya Michaels

Compile: Ethan@imToken

In order to facilitate the reader's reading, the adaptation of the original content is not affected, and the part of the article is derived from the network.

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