Hardware wallet users struggle with Dymension airdrop

The delegated proof-of-stake blockchain, built on the Cosmos SDK, aims to be a service provider for application-specific rollups — or “RollApps” — offering security, interoperability (using IBC) and liquidity for those building atop the Dymension Hub.

The project estimated that its airdrop included about 180,000 addresses which interacted with Solana protocols such as Wormhole, Tensor, and Drip.Haus, that collectively received 10 million DYM (or 1% of the total supply).

Of those, a large majority will be users of Phantom, as the leading Solana browser extension wallet with upwards of 3 million downloads from the Chrome app store.

Claiming DYM required users to specify an EVM address to receive the tokens and, since Phantom supports Ethereum and Polygon, many of those will have specified the EVM address provided by the wallet.

However, despite the large installed user base, Phantom users could not claim DYM using the project’s staking page, since the Dymension chain is unsupported.

As a workaround, these users were told on the Dymension Discord to import their wallet’s seed phrase into MetaMask. The seed phrase — typically 12 words — can be used to reconstruct a wallet’s private key, and is generally best kept safely hidden away offline.

For those with a Ledger hardware wallet to protect the private key rather than Phantom itself, claiming was even trickier.

When Phantom added Ledger support, it opted for a somewhat unusual BIP44 Root Ethereum derivation path. That meant it was impossible to import the wallet used to claim DYM using MetaMask’s default settings.

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A Phantom support email seen by Blockworks stated that “to claim the tokens using a Ledger wallet you will need a wallet provider that supports both the DYM network and the derivation path of the Ledger wallet. This is not currently supported by wallets, unfortunately.”

Alex Jupiter, senior product manager for MetaMask suggested that Phantom or Dymension could contribute a solution.

“MetaMask already supports different derivation paths for the Ledger hardware wallet,” Jupiter told Blockworks. “If a new derivation path needs to be added for the Ledger hardware wallet, we’ll happily accept and review a community contribution to our codebase for this addition.”

That’s a problem, according to Hannes Graah, co-founder of Zeal wallet.