Living on the Edge (Edge Wallet, That Is)

I've been using the Edge Wallet for nearly a year now. I moved to it from Coinomi because Coinomi didn't support a payment protocol I expected to use (but didn't) when I went up to New Hampshire for PorcFest.

TL;DR: Highly recommended. It's non-custodial (you control your keys and edge doesn't have them, which is why Edge was able to post a nice smarmy reply to the Trudeau junta's "we're freezing cryptocurrency wallets" diktats and make it stick). It's easy to use. It's well-secured with PIN and optional 2FA. And it works with a number of "instant" exchanges so that if you want to (for example) swap some BTC for some FIO or some BCH for some DOGE, you're likely to find a deal and certain to get the most competitive fee offer on that deal.

The longer version will just be a few items of the "features I'd like that aren't there" variety, which isn't really negative since no wallet can have every feature I'd like.

• It doesn't include a Steem wallet. Which is something I'd like to have.
• Its Ravencoin wallet doesn't seem to handle RVN assets. I sent myself a million NORTONXIIIs from the Ravencoin native wallet thinking it did, so now I'm down a million NORTONXIIIs.
• It doesn't support the Lightning Network. Which for all I know may just not be possible -- does that require a dedicated app?
• So far as I can tell, it doesn't (at least yet) support using FIO for things like voting or assigning proxies to vote your tokens.

Which brings me to FIO (the Foundation for Interwallet Operability token). That's what happened to get me thinking about Edge today and deciding it was time for an "after nearly a year" rating/review.

Edge just implemented FIO staking. You can stake any number of the FIO tokens in your wallet. Stakers receive rewards from a pool which consists of 25% of all FIO chain fees. The staked tokens remain in your wallet, but can't be spent/sent while staked (or for seven days after un-staking them). That sounds good to me, so I converted a little BTC to FIO and staked it.

I think FIO is a great idea. It solves a couple of problems:

1. Cryptocurrency addresses are long strings of integers and letters that can be confusing. FIO addresses, linked to compatible wallets (Edge being one of those wallets) are simple. Mine is knappster@edge. If you have that address and are wanting to send me any kind of cryptocurrency, you can just send it to that address instead of copying the big long string of integers and letters and hoping you didn't forget to select the last integer or letter, etc. Or having to ask me for a wallet address or trusting a QR code that you hope is actually from me. Or whatever. You can also request crypto from someone else's FIO address to yours. Which brings me to ...
2. FIO wallets make it easy to attach data to sends and requests. For example, I could send your FIO address a requestfor 0.01 BTC "for writing services," and both of us would have a record of who paid how much to whom and for what without going through a more centralized service like BitPay, CoinPayments, etc. for invoicing and payment.

There's one devil in those details, though: The FIO address is linked to a particular address for each cryptocurrency, which makes tracking by third parties easier than if each of us generated a new address for every transaction. I don't know if there's anything to be done about that, but it's something to keep in mind.

One final thing on FIO: The standard cost for an FIO address like my knappster@edge is, IIRC, US $1.99. But when you install the Edge wallet, you can get your FIO address "free."