Even experienced Bitshares traders might get something good out of this post!
If you keep hearing about Bitshares and have never tried it yet, you can create an account for FREE and download a wallet using my previous tutorial here.
WHAT ARE THE HIDDEN FEATURES?
When I say there are hidden wallet features, to be fair, they are known features that just aren't obvious. You may discover them eventually one day. Let's see how many of these things you've already figured out.
First of all, it is important to know that your Bitshares Lite Wallet is your interface to the BTS blockchain. Your private keys never get sent or received to network nodes. Instead, your keys stay on your computer, and they sign transactions and then send them to nodes to broadcast to the network for you.
Those same nodes also feed your Bitshares Wallet all of the information it asks for, from the Bitshares blockchain.
Lesson #1 of navigating the Bitshares Wallet. Understand how it communicates, and be patient.
Sometimes when moving around in your wallet, the information doesn't appear instantly. For instance, say you just made a BUY order. You click the buy button, and nothing happens. You think it didn't work, so you hit buy again. You wait. Nothing happens again.
...
then..
...
About 20 seconds later, you get a pop up asking you to approve the transaction. You push cancel. Then you get another pop up to approve it again. You push cancel again.
What just happened?
Look at the bottom of your screen, and if you ever see this:
It means that your internet connection between you and that node is having communication issues. It could be anything causing that.. maybe your internet connection was bad. Maybe someone turned on the microwave in the kitchen and it temporarily disabled your Wifi. Maybe the node doing some security updates and then just finished rebooting itself. Maybe that particular node is busier than usual.
When this happens, your Bitshares Lite wallet is going to act a little strange. Most of the time it won't do that.. but as long as you pay attention to the "health" of your wallet connection to a Bitshares network node, you can understand why things might have acted slow or weird.
Now let's get started on how to navigate the wallet . There are so many different things available to you, they have no choice but to hide some of the menu options. If they didn't, you'd open the wallet and have 300 buttons on your screen. No one wants to see that many options all at once!!
Lesson #2: How to discover the main menu options in the wallet.
When you first open the wallet, you will notice this at the top of the screen:
That doesn't look like a lot of options does it? Well... that's the main 5 things people use the most. So they are the easiest ones to find.
(There are 5, the blue Bitshares logo is a menu option too - I didn't know that for a long time)
Now let's say you're having problems connecting to a node. None of those 5 options at the top of the screen are going to help you. So what do you do?
Look at the top right corner:
That's where your username is, and how much BTS value your account has... There is a little 3 line icon there. That's super important. Click on it, and you see this:
WHOA! Nice menu! Look at all those options!!
(You haven't seen anything yet. We're just getting started)
CLICK ON SETTINGS, then ACCESS
This will show you the various nodes that are hard-coded into the wallet. It will show you which one your currently connected to...
Usually "Choose closest automatically" is a good option. However, at anytime, you can pick another node of your choice. Especially if a particular node seems to be out of sync at the moment.
Knowing how you are connected, and what nodes are available to you at all times, is something you should know.
There is also an "ADD NODE" button, so if you ever see someone has launched a new node on bitsharestalk.org before the next wallet release, you can add them here too!
...and if you are good at running servers, you can run your own full node if you like... The software is open source. The network is decentralized. More nodes, the better.
ONE EXTRA TIP. RELOAD YOUR SCREEN
- Your Bitshares Wallet acts like a web browser does... So if your browser window sits idle for too long, sometimes it's a good idea at the top, where it says "File, Edit, View" to click VIEW then RELOAD
When you do that though, it will re-lock the padlock (top right corner) on your account for safety. If you need it unlocked, you can just click the padock and it will unlock it again.
Obviously I can't take you through all the features in one post. But I'll make more of these tutorials as long as people continue to show interest in them.
You won't have to wait long... I'll be doing another one soon!
Reminder: You can create a Bitshares account for FREE and download a wallet using my previous tutorial here.