A Guide to Zilliqa Token Swap

Hello everyone,

We see several queries on our on-going token swap across our community and social media channels, and understand your concerns. We aim to address as many of these as possible with the information we have, and guide you through this simple process.

This article summarises what token swap is, why it is necessary, and all the available information on the exchanges supporting token swap (and their respective timelines). We’d like to emphasise straight away that we are still liaising with several exchanges who could potentially support token swap. As and when we receive confirmation on their support, we will let you know immediately. As of now, these names are excluded from the status list below to avoid confusion.

What is token swap?

Token swap is a mechanism that will help you convert ERC20 ZILs from the Ethereum network to native ZILs on the Zilliqa network at the rate of 1:1. This is crucial for all token holders as the trading of ERC 20 ZILs will eventually stop permanently.

Why is Zilliqa using exchanges to conduct the swap? How does it work?

Since the TGE, Zilliqa has been very mindful of potential risks associated with token sale and allocation. All who joined our token sale at that point- whether larger or smaller token holders — had to go through a fairly stringent KYC/AML procedures. This procedure was of the utmost important for two reasons:

Firstly, to reduce risks on the Zilliqa team, and secondly to ensure the sustainability of a project that is operating in an evolving regulatory ecosystem. That is why for the upcoming token swap, we find it crucial to be consistent with the best practices we’ve adopted since the early stages of our project by avoiding unchecked direct token swap. Given the bandwidth and capacity of the Zilliqa team, we cannot lead KYC/AML for such a large number of token holders. After discussions with our legal counsel, we decided that leveraging third parties to facilitate the swap was the most robust option.

Thus, Zilliqa has chosen to facilitate token swap through reliable top exchanges for reasons of convenience and security — and the process has already begun. While we have recommended some tried-and-tested mechanisms to all exchanges we are liaising with, some may vary in the methods they use and their timeline for swaps. We cannot stipulate the exact procedure adopted by all platforms. There may be some differences across exchanges. When that happens, we will try to inform the community to help clarify all steps to successfully conduct the token swap.

The basic principle behind it remains the same, regardless of the platform. Via exchanges, users can:

1. Deposit their ERC20 interim ZILs on the exchange
2. Get native ZILs in return when withdrawing from the exchange

Is it critical to swap my tokens immediately? What happens if I don’t?

You are strongly encouraged to swap your tokens as early as possible. Eventually after a deadline (exact date to be confirmed later), ERC20 ZILs will be frozen and become obsolete. Native ZILs on Zilliqa mainnet will be the only ZIL token. To use the various Dapps in the ZIL ecosystem, the native tokens are needed as gas fees similar to Ethereum’ ETH tokens. Find out more about gas fees on Zilliqa here.

How many phases of the swap can the community expect?

We expect the overall token swap to be a rolling process, with different exchanges facilitating their respective users for the swap at different dates, in different batches over the coming months. We will send advance notice to our communities on various platforms before we end the token swap.

What is the duration of each swap? Will this change in each phase?

There is no fixed duration for the swap at present. It will go on until the deadline when the ERC20 ZIL tokens will be frozen, and depends on the exchange in question.

Token Swap progress update (last updated 20th August)

Notice: Please ensure you have your new ZIL mainnet wallet address for deposits. There has been a change in the format to reduce confusions with similar ETH addresses. The old address remains valid as well. Please read more here https://blog.zilliqa.com/zilliqa-migrates-to-new-address-format-bf1fa6d7e41d. Zilliqa is currently coordinating with wallets to make the move to new addresses and we will keep you posted on this.

Our recommendations:

• Please precisely follow the procedure and instructions of the exchange you are using for the token swap. For instance, make sure that you only send ERC20 ZILs to an Ethereum address provided by the exchange for ERC20 ZIL deposit, and only withdraw native ZILs to a Zilliqa mainnet address. Your tokens may be lost if you send ERC20 ZILs to a Zilliqa mainnet address, or native ZILs to an Ethereum address. Please consult the exchanges’ customer support if you have any questions
• For rapid exchange and convenience, please use the platforms who are currently supporting the swap. For those unable to participate at present, please rest assured that you will have other opportunities to do so
• Stay vigilant of scammers. Please use official sources to get your information, kindly verify with us if you have any doubts, and only conduct token swap from reputed exchanges

What comes post-token swap?

By using mainnet address generated by supported wallets (recommended list below), you can withdraw the ZILs parked in the exchange addresses after the token swap phase and store them safely for future use:

• Moonlet — Blockchain agnostic wallet that supports both Ethereum and Zilliqa chains. Recommended as it has been audited by BitSentinel and has gone through a bug bounty programme on BugCrowd
• ZilPay — A dApp interactive wallet that allows Users to deploy/call contracts easily
• Zillet.io — A Progressive Web Application (PWA) web wallet that allows Users to interact with their accounts either in a browser setting or on their Desktops
• ZHIP — The world’s first iOS wallet that supports Schnorr signature for Zilliqa
• xZIL — An Android wallet for Zilliqa
• Math wallet — Our partner iOS/Android wallet that will support Zilliqa dApp in the near future
• Trust wallet: An ethereum and multi cryptocurrency wallet, now supports mainnet ZILs
• Ledger Manager: Offers an easy way to organise apps on your Ledger device (like Nano S), plans to list Zilliqa app in the near future

Please remember that details of other exchanges supporting token swap, and any corresponding timelines will be shared with you in due course. For all token swap updates, subscribe to @zilliqa Telegram announcement channel.