What is a FIO Address?

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bybrad@currencyhub.io
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For full a complete overview viit the official FIO KB here.

FIO Addresses will act as the human-readable wallet identifier for users on the FIO Protocol. They are necessary for users to utilize all the capabilities of the FIO Protocol, but also serve as a replacement for complicated public addresses across all tokens and coins in the user’s wallet.

FIO Addresses have the construct of username@domain. Examples of a FIO Address would be:

brad@edge or Shakar@funds

Registration of a FIO Address is done directly through a FIO-enabled application, or through a hosted registration site that is open to the community.

The FIO Address itself and all subsequent interactions with the FIO Protocol are controlled via a FIO private key. Loss of access to this private key suffers the same consequences as with any crypto asset – the FIO Address will no longer be usable by the original owner, nor can it be retrieved.

How Does a FIO Address map to public addresses?

While there are many services that allow a user to map specific public addresses to a wallet name, the FIO Protocol is designed with the expectation that users should never see, or even know about, public addresses in the first place. To achieve this, a FIO Address stores public addresses on the blockchain based on a “just-in-time method“.

Manual Mapping SolutionsFIO Addresses
Supported BlockchainsMust be added by mapping providerAutomatically supported
Mappable to arbitrary data(IP Addresses, etc)Yes (data types may differ)No
Requires user input to mapYesNo
Openly readableYesUser Option

Rather than a user logging into a portal and choosing what blockchain public addresses their FIO Address (like jane@gold) should map to, a FIO Address will automatically store a copy of the user’s public address for the transaction being processed (which can be encrypted for privacy reasons).

For example:

  • jane@crypto is attempting to send BTC to satoshi@edgewallet
  • satoshi@edgewallet stores their BTC public address on the FIO Chain
  • If the two counter parties have elected to “friend” each other then this can be stored encrypted where only the two of htem can read the BTC public address
  • jane@crypto‘s wallet is able to send to that BTC public address, utilizing the underlying Bitcoin blockchain
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