In this tutorial, we’re going to be covering Typhon wallet, a Cardano in-browser extension and web wallet that was created by Strica, the same team that brought us Cardanoscan.
You’ll learn how to:
Let’s get started!
1. Download the in-browser extension for Chrome, Edge, Brave
Head on over to Typhon’s website and click on ‘Download Extension’ to download your browser extension of choice.
For this tutorial, we will be installing the Typhon wallet Chrome extension.
2. Create new wallet
Once you’ve installed the extension you’ll be redirected to a screen where you can connect to the Cardano wallet in a few ways:
Click on ‘Create’ and give your wallet a name and choose a strong password — this password is your spending password and you’ll be required to fill it in when you submit transactions so keep it handy.
Check the box for the t’s and c’s and click ‘Continue.’
3. Select and write down your seed phrase (recovery phrase)
Users can select how many words they’d like in their seed phrase, with options for 12, 15 and 24 words in a seed phrase.
How many words you ultimately choose is up to preference. Each seed phrase is a cluster of randomized words that are unique to the wallet that is being created. It’s important to write these down in the correct order and store them away safely offline.
Holding onto this phrase is your only shot of getting access to your wallet with all your assets in it should something happen to the device you’re setting it up on.
If you toggle the Pro button at the bottom, the seed phrase gets pulled into a box with the order of the phrase from left to right. Using the pro option means you’ll need to enter all of the words in the seed phrase in the correct order, so let’s just stick with the basic option to make things easy.
4. Verify Seed Phrase
Type in the missing words of your entire seed phrase in the correct sequence and click on ‘Verify And Unlock.’
5. Select Wallet Type
On the next screen you’ll be able to choose your wallet type:
For this tutorial, we’re going to select HD wallet.
6. Exploring the dashboard
Now that your wallet is effectively set up, let’s explore the dashboard:
7. Fund your wallet
In order to transact with your wallet and stake your ADA, you’ll need to fund it with ADA. Check out the ‘Fund your Cardano wallet’ section of this guide to learn how you can fund your wallet with Binance.
Any centralized exchange will work by purchasing ADA and sending it to your Typhon wallet’s receiving address.
8. Staking with a pool
Staking is an important part of the Cardano ecosystem and its proof of stake consensus mechanism ensures greater decentralization. Now that you’ve got some ADA in the wallet you can proceed with delegating it to a stake pool to passively earn rewards or “interest” on your crypto holdings.
It’s important to note that you don’t have to lock up your tokens for a period of time, you can undelegate at any time and spend your ADA however you wish. Click on ‘Staking’ and ‘Start’ to see a list of all the available stake pools to start delegating to.
There are over 3100 active stake pools you can choose to delegate to, but for this example I’m going to use the search function to type in the stake pool ticker symbol TAB of our partners over at The Art Bank.
This stake pool supports innovative artists on Cardano by giving delegators access to their growing collection of NFTs and access to new mints from artists they support.
Click the ‘Select’ button to start staking your tokens. There is a nominal transaction fee that must be paid as well as a deposit of 2 ADA to register a staking address on the blockchain. This is a one-time fee that is charged when you first delegate to any stake pool and will be refunded to your wallet if you undelegate from the pool.
Click ‘Confirm’ and enter in your spending password and submit the transaction. Once you’ve done that, you can close the transaction box. Once the transaction has been successfully processed, you’ll see your staking account with all the information about your total stake, rewards and more.
9. Assets
Next up, let’s navigate to the assets tab. Here you’ll see any fungible tokens or NFTs you’ve sent to your Typhon wallet or purchased with your connected wallet from an NFT marketplace.
10. Address
If you click on ‘Address’ you’ll see all of the public addresses that you have available for your wallet to receive payments — if there is a wallet address that you have used, you can toggle ‘show used’ at the top.
You can click the copy to clipboard icon if you want to receive any assets to these addresses. Having multiple receiving addresses to use allows for greater privacy as it’s harder for people to know what you’re up to if you switch between addresses.
Rest assured, anything sent to anyone of these addresses will still end up in your wallet.
11. Voting
On the next tab you’ll see the voting feature and all the relevant information and useful links on voting for proposals on the Catalyst voting app that’s available on iOS and Android.
Stake pool delegators that have a minimum of 500 ADA staked can participate in voting for proposals submitted by the Cardano community that will help to shape the ecosystem in the future.
Our partners at The Art Bank were successfully funded in the most recent Fund 9 round for a Cardano Community Centre in Cape Town that aims to educate local artists about the Cardano blockchain and NFTs — if you’re interested in learning more about that, check it out here.
12. Contacts
Here you’re able to add any contacts for wallets that you send assets to like an exchange, an artist that you support or other Cardano wallets you set up.You can create a name and paste in a public wallet address and create a contact to quickly send assets to without having to copy their address from somewhere else by clicking on ‘Transact.’
13. Other Settings
You can opt to toggle between Light and Dark Mode depending on your preferences.
Other ‘Settings’ include changing the interface’s language, importing and exporting wallets settings from existing Typhon wallets and managing your collateral account. This is particularly important for interacting with dApps like DEXs and other NFT marketplaces on Cardano. You’ll need to set collateral to interact with these dApps by clicking on ‘Manage.’
The default amount of 5 ADA is okay for you to execute a smart contract using the wallet. Click ‘Add’ and ‘Confirm’ and enter your spending password to submit the transaction.
If you have any questions or require assistance you can navigate to the support tab which redirects you to their FAQ page and you can submit a ticket if you need any help.
This in-browser extension and web Cardano wallet has a clear interface that is super user-friendly, especially for newcomers to the Cardano space. The NFT viewing experience is great and we really like what the metadata feature may promise for the future and the option of adding contacts to quickly transact with known addresses.
Whilst the wallet is missing an in-wallet dApp connector and their mobile app is still being built, Typhon makes transacting on Cardano easy and the overall experience is a pleasant one that will get even better as the team continues to build over time.