It’s best to use the Blockstack Browser locally installed to do this. But if you get trouble, there is another way.
If you have trouble doing this recipie, you could try doing it in a Private Window. However, then be extra doubly sure you copy your keychain backup phrase so you can control your account later.
Create a new account (or you could restore your existing key chain, but be aware that browser.blockstack.com is hosted by blockstack so it’s not local)
Write down the keychain (you’ll need it for later)
Thank you @odinho for your guides here. While I may not be as eloquent as you in the technicalities of Blockstack, I’d like to share my situation as it may be of relevance to others.
I installed Blockstack on my Linux machine. By running sudo gulp proxy in one terminal and sudo gulp dev in another, I can then access my Blockstack account at http://localhost:3000/profiles. There I was able to connect two social media accounts and receive some Bitcoin. The “add a username” function does not work.
Following some of your instructions above, I was able to create the URL using DevTools. This prompted me for a keychain and I restored the keychain I had created with my local install using the associated keychain phrase. It’s now unclear to me whether my account lives on my local machine or somewhere with Blockstack. Now when I go to the URL I created under your guidance, the “Blockstack Token Sale” sign in request says: “Choose a Blockstack ID to sign in with.” and prompts me with the ID that I can also see at http://localhost:3000/profiles. I click “Approve” and then a page with “Token Sale Registration” in large bold letters loads, or rather appears to load - three dots cycle below those words and nothing further happens.
I’m sure there are a lot of things I’m doing wrong here and any insights would be most welcome.
As long as you didn’t ever write in https://browser.blockstack.com and instead used http://localhost:8888 everywhere, it will all be on your local machine. Using browser.blockstack.com you also store things locally in your browser as I understand, but you are relying on some server-side helper code run by blockstack. So your keychain ‘lives’ in your browser anyhow, but it will be indexed to the origin, so that could be why you needed to write your backup in again if you suddenly went to browser.blockstack.com instead of localhost:8888.
You do not need any Bitcoin in your account by the way. You also do not need a name to register. You do, however, need to verify at least one account.
Your problem is not one I encountered. I would check the DevTools console, and check for any errors there. I would also try to do a hard refresh first, as the developers have instructed other people. That is oftenCTRL+F5.
As another potential tryout: if you now actually did seem to use browser.blockstack.com anyway, and just want to get your registration in. I would try to open a Private Window, and with your keychain phrase, retry in this fully new environment.
Since it worked there, it will probably (for that other day) work to hard refresh your local browser. And if that doesn’t work just clear all your local storage for Blockstack and input your restore keychain phrase. If I understand correctly, your profile with your attestations.
In other news, I just noticed my odinho.id was just transferred to my former nameless-registration. Awesome
If you have installed Blockstack, you should uninstall it first before trying the Web version
When installed, Blockstack adds a protocol handler for blockstack: URIs. This will interfere with the Web version when you try to sign into an app or the token sale.
Did you click ‘Sign in with Blockstack’? The link will only appear once you do that. It will try to navigate to this new page, but should keep the one you have open, if it doesn’t, you can enable the “don’t clear network requests” functionality to make sure you still have the request in your devtools for copying.
(That being said, if the js lib could actually put a href on the sign in button, that would be super awesome since you could then easily just right click and copy-paste the URL, instead of needing devtools.)
Yes, the screenshot I sent you is after I clicked sign in with Blockstack. It opened a new tab to the blockstack browser and per the instructions I went back to the original tab with the sign in option and am not seeing the URL referenced in the troubleshooting guide you wrote.
Thanks for all your help, hoping to get in before the ICO closes
You have two errors in your console, – maybe those will tell of the problem? Seems to me that the javascript crashed for some reason, so it was never able to get the request done.
… However, you said it opened a new tab! So it must’ve worked. You then got a URL with a ?authRequest= in, you can copy that value to the browser.blockstack.com/auth?authRequest= URL.
What? You don’t seem to be following the guide? This is a guide for using browser.blockstack.com, not the installed version. It would probably be easier if you uninstalled your local Blockstack Browser if you have problem separating which is which
The answer to your question is, you’re using the wrong URL. You probably have localhost in your URL, you should have https://browser.blockstack.com/auth/?authRequest=... in it.
The UX is not where it should be yet. Keeping your identity client-side like that is really a new way and method of doing things. It’ll take some time until it’s really solid. But there’s been great progress, before it was a lot harder.
I got the similar email to the one above. So should I just wait to hear from you guys regarding more information I need to provide, such as my government ID, so that I can take part in the token sale. Thanks in advance!
I was able to register and got the below email. I think I am good to go now?