Introduction

Hardware wallets are considered to be the most secure way to keep your crypto assets. From now on, Ledger Devices (S/S+/X) can be used to protect your Hive account. This guide will help you protecting your Hive account with keys derived on your Ledger device and treat is as a cold wallet. This is the ultimate protection for your account.

Quickly about Hive

Hive is different than most blockchains. It has two native assets: HIVE and HBD (Hive Backed Dollar) and usernames instead of public addresses. Those accounts have different keys associated with different roles (owner, active, posting and memo). Every role can contain different key. To ultimately protect your Hive account it is recommended to replace your Owner key with the one derived from your device - this will protect you from leaking your private key by mistake.

Requirements

Before you start, make sure you have

Initialized Ledger Device with newest firmware
Hive application installed on your device

Install Hive App

Open the Manager in Ledger Live application
Connect and unlock your Ledger Device
If asked, follow the onscreen instructions and Allow Ledger Manager.
Find Hive in the app catalog.
Click the Install button and wait for application to be sucesfully installed
Close Ledger Live

Get an account

If you already have Hive account, you can skip this part.

Hive accounts are not free - they need to be created by another user and it costs 3 HIVE (or equivalent in Resource Credits which are proportional to staked Hive aka Hive Power).

There are multiple providers of Hive accounts. Most of them requires some sort of validation (i.e phone or email) and some can utilize different crypto assets (like BTC) to pay the fee.

Visit and choose what fits you best:

https://signup.hive.io

Account discovery - how to find accounts associated with your device

Hive Ledger Wallet will automatically discover all accounts associated with your device everytime you will try using it. The process is very simple, you just need to authorize access to your device.

Connect your device, unlock and open Hive application.
Visit https://hiveledger.io and click Full access with Ledger Nano S/X card
Make sure you have your Ledger unlocked and Hive application opened. Click "Connect" .
Select your device from a drop down. This popup may not appear later on if you connect and authorize your device.
Wait for the wallet to discover accounts associated with your device (if any). This might take few seconds.
If you use Hive Ledger Wallet for the first time, you will see another screen, with the information that no account associated with your device was found. In such case you need to associate your account as descrived below.

How to associate your account with Ledger device

If you already have your Hive username, you can use your Ledger device to ultimately protect it by changing all your keys to the ones derived from your device.

In the example below, we will associate existing account called test.ledger with the device. You will need current owner private key in Hive supported WIF format.

Connect your device, unlock and open Hive application.
Click Associate existing account card to start the process.
Click Request new key to find new, unused public key that could be used to replace your current owner key.
Confirm the key on your device. Navigate using left and right buttons to inspect the key. Make sure it's the same that in your terminal
Confirm public key by pressing both buttons on "Approve" screen.
Click continue to start the second step.
Fill your username and current private owner key in WIF format.
Click "Continue" to start the last step
Select all the key roles you want to replace. If you want to create cold storage wallet, we recommend replacing all the roles. If you want to keep social abilities (voting, commenting etc), unselect Posting key.
Click Update account. Your account will be updated with new keys and you will be automatically logged in into the wallet.

How to transfer HIVE or HBD to another account

You can send liquid tokens (HIVE or HBD) withing 3 seconds to any other existing Hive account.

To send 0.001 HIVE from engrave.cold to engrave account:

Connect your device, unlock and open Hive application.
Open Hive Ledger Wallet and proceed with Account discovery procedure described above. You should be able to see your dashboard
Make sure you activated account from which you want to transfer funds.
Visit Balance tab
Fill "Transfer" form with receiver username, asset and amount. You can skip "Memo" field as it is optional and serves as a transfer description.
Click "Send" button to open confirmation modal.
Click "Sign with Ledger", validate and accept transaction on your device.
Use left and right buttons to verify transaction on your hardware wallet.
Accept the transaction by pressing both buttons on "Approve" screen.
Wait for a few seconds until your transaction is broadcasted and confirmed by the blockchain.

How to stake HIVE

To gain more governance power over Hive blockchain, you can convert your HIVE into Hive Power. We call it "powering up" and other blockchains calls it "staking". Underneath, your tokens are converted to VESTS. Withdrawal of your staked HIVE (converting it back to liquid HIVE) will take 13 weeks.

Connect your device, unlock and open Hive application.
Open Hive Ledger Wallet and proceed with Account discovery procedure described above. You should be able to see your dashboard
Make sure you activated account from which you want to transfer funds.
Visit Balance tab
Fill "Power up" form with desired amount of HIVE tokens to stake. It's impossible to stake HBD so the Asset selector is disabled.
Click "Power up" button to open confirmation modal.
Click "Sign with Ledger", validate and accept transaction on your device.
Use left and right keys to verify transaction on your hardware wallet
Accept the transaction by pressing both buttons on "Approve" screen.