Someone is asking for my recovery phrase. Is that normal?
No. Nobody legitimate has ever needed it, and giving it away is final.
Your recovery phrase IS the wallet. It is not a password and not a backup code: anyone holding it can move everything out, instantly, and nothing can be reversed.
No support desk, no wallet maker, no exchange, no airdrop, no "verification", no migration and no site — including this one — will ever ask for it. There is no situation where sending it helps you, which is what makes the rule easy: the request itself is the whole scam.
The same goes for a private key, and for anyone asking you to "import" your wallet somewhere by typing the words in.
What is gas and why do I need it?
Every action that changes something on a chain is a transaction, and every transaction costs a small fee paid in ETH. That fee is called gas. It pays the network for doing the work and it is charged whether the transaction succeeds or fails.
So you need a little ETH in your wallet before you can do anything at all, even if what you want to do is receive something. "Insufficient funds" usually means gas, not the amount you were trying to send.
On this chain a block is a tenth of a second, so transactions confirm almost immediately and fees are small.
My transaction failed. What happened, and did it cost me?
A failed transaction still costs gas: the network did the work of trying. It did not move your tokens, though — a revert undoes everything except the fee.
The usual causes, in order of how often they happen: not enough ETH for gas; slippage (the price moved between pressing the button and the transaction landing); an allowance that was never given; or the contract itself refusing for a reason of its own.
Open the transaction on robinscan and read the status line. If it says reverted, nothing moved.
What is an approval, and why should I revoke them?
An approval is a standing permission with no expiry date.
Approving a contract lets it move that token out of your wallet, in any amount up to the limit, at any time in the future. It does not expire and it does not need you to be there.
That is fine for a contract you trust and use. It is a problem for one you used once, because a contract that is safe today can be drained or taken over tomorrow, and the permission is still sitting there.
Revoking sets the allowance back to zero. It costs a small amount of gas and takes one transaction. Doing it for things you no longer use is the cheapest safety habit there is — it is quest five here for exactly that reason.
What is slippage?
The price you see is the price right now. Between pressing the button and your transaction landing, other people trade too, and the price moves. Slippage is how much worse than the quote you are willing to accept before the transaction gives up.
Set it too low and transactions fail in a busy moment. Set it too high and you can get a much worse price than you expected, which is also how sandwich attacks make money.
On a thin market — most new launches — the price impact of your own trade can be larger than the slippage setting. Buying a small amount is the simplest protection.
How much should my first purchase be?
An amount you would be completely fine losing.
Most launched tokens go to zero. That is not pessimism, it is the base rate on every launchpad on every chain, and it is the number to plan around.
So size a first purchase so that the normal outcome — it goes to zero — does not hurt and does not change your week. The point of the first one is the mechanics: approving, confirming, watching it land, seeing it in your wallet. You are paying tuition, not investing.
Nobody here, including the quests, will tell you what to buy. Which token you pick does not matter for the lesson.
How do I tell if a token is dangerous before I buy?
Four facts, all public, all a minute's work:
1. How much of the supply the deployer holds. A large share is not a prediction, it is a capability: one address that size can sell into every bid there is.
2. Whether the deployer has already sold on the curve. A fact with a timestamp, not an accusation.
3. How concentrated the holders are. "Top ten hold 90%" means ten decisions control the price.
4. Whether anything was burned, and by whom.
Quest four walks you through reading these for a token of your choosing, and checks your answers against the chain. None of them tell you what will happen. They tell you who can make it happen.
A token I never bought appeared in my wallet. What do I do?
Leave it alone. Holding one is harmless; interacting with one may not be.
Anyone can send anything to any address. A token arriving unasked is often bait: the aim is to get you to visit a site, approve something, or swap it.
Holding it costs nothing and does nothing. Approving or swapping it is where the risk is. You cannot "refuse" it and you do not need to — hide it in your wallet and move on.
How do I keep my wallet safe, in practice?
The short version, in order of how much each one saves you:
1. The recovery phrase goes on paper, never in a photo, a note, a password manager field you share, or a chat. Anyone who has it owns the wallet.
2. Read the wallet prompt before signing. It is the last place you can say no, and rejecting costs nothing.
3. Keep a separate address for experiments and small amounts. Losing a test wallet should be annoying, not serious.
4. Revoke approvals you do not use.
5. Install wallets only from their official site, typed by hand. Search results and ads are a known way to be handed a fake.
What actually is a wallet?
A wallet is a key, and an address is what that key controls. The wallet app is a viewer and a signer; it does not hold your tokens, the chain does.
Your address is public. Sharing it is safe — that is how somebody sends you something — and everything that has ever happened at it is visible to anyone, forever. That is why a tax report or a profile can be built from an address alone, without you connecting anything.
The recovery phrase is the key itself, in words. That is the part that is never shared.
Can people see what I do with my wallet?
Yes. Every transaction from your address is public and permanent, and anyone can look at the whole history at any time — including tools like this one.
An address is not tied to your name by the chain itself, but it is tied to everything else the address does. If one of those things is linked to you — an exchange withdrawal, a post, a payment — the rest is linked too.
Using separate addresses for separate purposes is the practical answer. There is no undo.
How do I get ETH onto this chain?
Either send ETH from somewhere you already hold it, or bridge it in. Either way it arrives at the same public address you already have.
Two things worth knowing: send a small amount first and confirm it arrived before sending the rest — an address typo is unrecoverable — and make sure the network you are sending to is this one. ETH sent to the same address on a different chain is not lost, but getting it back is work.
We do not link to a bridge from here. Use the one the chain's own documentation names.
What are these badges, and can I sell them?
They are yours and cannot be transferred to anyone, by anyone.
Each badge is an NFT that records that your address did a specific thing and that the chain confirmed it. Transfers and approvals revert at the contract level — there is no admin switch and no exception.
A certificate you can sell is not a certificate, it is a receipt for somebody else's work. The only other thing you can do with one is burn it, which only you can do: you are entitled to withdraw a public statement about yourself, and burning frees the quest to be earned again.
The artwork is stored in the contract itself, so there is nothing to expire.
Is this free? What is the catch?
The quests, the checks, the badges and this desk are free, and reading anything needs no wallet at all.
You pay gas to the network when you claim a badge, because a badge is minted to your address by you — that is what makes it yours rather than ours.
$FIRST, if it launches, adds early access to new quests. It never gates a lesson. Teaching somebody not to lose their money and charging for it would be a strange way to start.
I did the quest but the check says not yet.
A few ordinary causes:
- The address in the box is not the one you used. Paste the address that sent the transaction.
- The transaction has not landed yet. Blocks are fast here, but a pending transaction is not a completed one.
- It was done more than two days ago. Chain checks look back about 48 hours to stay fast.
- For the swap quest: it has to be a purchase on Pons, not a transfer.
If the check says "unavailable" rather than "not yet", the problem is on our side or the explorer's, not yours. Wait a minute and try again.
