Sending IOST safely: memo, gas and the right network

Sending IOST in short

Sending IOST is safe when three things match: the network, the address and, for exchange deposits, the memo. Most lost-IOST stories break one of those three. The amount and the fee matter much less. On the IOST L1 there is no token fee per transfer, and a transaction settles irreversibly in roughly half a minute.

The tracker at the top of this page reads the live IOST L1 and BNB Chain for you. Paste a transaction hash or an account name after you send, and it shows whether the transfer went through. The rest of this guide explains the rules that decide whether a transfer arrives: which network to pick, how memos work, what to do if you forgot one, how gas and RAM replace fees, and what exchanges charge. It ends with a checklist to run through before every send.

Step one: choose the network (L1 or BEP-20)

Since the IOST 3.0 upgrade in March 2025, “IOST” can mean two different tokens on two different chains. L1 IOST is the native coin of the original IOST blockchain, which still runs. BEP-20 IOST is a token on BNB Smart Chain and the form most newer wallets hold. A third network, the IOST L2 (chain ID 182), uses BNB for gas, and its bridge moves only BNB, so you will rarely send IOST there. The two forms are not interchangeable on an exchange deposit screen, and sending one to an address that expects the other is a classic way to lose coins.

The practical rule: let the receiving side decide. If you are sending to an exchange, open its deposit page and see which networks it lists. Coincheck and Upbit accept only the IOST L1 network, and no Japanese exchange has shown support for BEP-20 IOST. Binance accepts both. If you are sending to a wallet, the wallet decides: an L1 account name for iWallet Pro, a 0x address for MetaMask. The official BEP-20 contract is 0xAf48B7e315a52518CfBF7d96C455D9dFAD94cB48; anything else carrying the IOST name on BNB Chain is not official. The IOST 3.0 guide explains why the two forms exist.

Moving between the two chains is one-way for now. The official iBridge at iostbridge.com converts L1 IOST to BEP-20 IOST, with a minimum of 10,000 and a maximum of 1,000,000 IOST per transfer. Large transfers above 500,000 IOST can take from ten minutes to ten hours. The reverse direction, BNB Chain back to L1, is marked “coming soon”. You may also see old guides about sending IOST to MyEtherWallet. Those date from the 2018 ERC-20 era. Binance offers only the L1 and BEP-20 networks for IOST, so do not withdraw to an Ethereum address.

Memo rules for L1 deposits

Creating an IOST L1 account costs tokens, so the official guide for exchanges tells them not to create an account per customer. Instead, each exchange runs one deposit account and gives every customer a unique memo. Your deposit lands in the shared account, and the memo tells the exchange whose it is. That is why an exchange deposit screen shows two fields, an account name and a memo, and why both must be copied exactly. Binance’s screen states it plainly: both a memo and an address are required.

Three rules cover almost every case. Sending L1 IOST to an exchange: always include the memo, character for character. Sending L1 IOST to your own wallet or a friend’s personal account: no memo is needed, unless the recipient asks for one. Sending BEP-20 IOST anywhere: there is no memo field. If a site asks for one on BNB Chain, you are on the wrong network. In Japanese apps the field is labelled メモ, and Coincheck lists IOST alongside XRP, NEM and XLM as coins that need memo checks.

One account, thousands of customers

An exchange’s IOST deposit account is shared by all its users. The memo is the only label that links a deposit to you. Lose the label, and the coins arrive in the right building but in nobody’s mailbox. That is why a missing memo is usually recoverable in principle but slow and uncertain in practice.

What to do if you forgot the memo

Stay calm and do not send again. If the account name was correct, your IOST almost certainly reached the exchange’s deposit account. The question is whether the exchange will match it to you by hand, and policies differ a lot.

Binance offers a self-service recovery for deposits with a missing or wrong memo, according to its help pages. A fee is charged only if the recovery succeeds. The current table cites the network withdrawal fee, while older pages said five times the withdrawal fee. Binance estimates two to three days and does not guarantee the result. If the amount left after the fee is below the minimum withdrawal, it cannot be recovered. Coincheck is stricter on the sending side: once a withdrawal has a transaction ID, it will not redo, cancel or refund it, including for memo mistakes. Cancellation is possible only while the withdrawal is still pending. If a completed transfer has not arrived, Coincheck tells you to contact the receiving service.

1. Find the transaction

   Look up the hash on the IOST explorer or iostscan.com and confirm the status is IRREVERSIBLE and the recipient is the exchange’s deposit account.

2. Collect the details

   Note the transaction hash, your sending account, the amount, the time, and the memo you should have used (from your deposit page).

3. Contact the receiving exchange

   Use its official support form or self-service recovery tool. Never reply to people who DM you offering to recover funds.

4. Wait, and do not resend

   Recovery takes days, if it works. Sending again with the correct memo is fine for new funds but does not fix the first deposit.

Gas and RAM instead of transfer fees

IOST L1 does not charge a token fee per transaction. Instead, you pledge (stake) IOST to receive gas, and transactions spend gas. Pledging 1 IOST gives 100,000 gas immediately and another 100,000 gas per day, up to a cap of 300,000 gas per pledged IOST. Gas cannot be traded, and unpledging takes 72 hours. A simple transfer uses about 9,000 gas.

Here is what that means in practice. Every L1 account has at least 10 IOST pledged when it is created. Ten pledged IOST produce 1,000,000 gas per day, and at around 9,000 gas per transfer that covers roughly 100 transfers per day at no extra cost. Send more than that and you either wait for gas to regenerate or pledge more IOST. The pledged tokens are locked, not spent, so you get them back after the 72-hour unpledge. One catch: failed transactions are still included in blocks and still consume gas.

RAM is the other resource. It stores data such as contract state and token balances. You buy it from the system at a market price that rises as free RAM shrinks, with a 2% buy fee that is burned, and you can sell it back. Sending plain IOST does not require buying RAM. RAM matters when you create an account (around 1 KB is bought by default, so a full new account costs about 11.6 IOST in pledge plus RAM) or use contracts. Our wallet guide covers account creation. Gas pledging is separate from staking for node votes, which earns rewards instead of gas.

BEP-20 and L2 transfers work like any EVM chain: you pay gas in BNB. A MetaMask wallet holding BEP-20 IOST but no BNB cannot send anything. Keep a little BNB in the same wallet. The L2’s stated target is a transfer fee under $0.001, but usage there is very low.

Need BNB for gas, or crypto to start? Grab it first

BEP-20 IOST needs BNB to move, and most IOST markets are quoted in crypto. Buy either with a card, then send it on with the right network.

Level up: open account

How fast an IOST transfer settles

The IOST L1 produces a block every 0.5 seconds. Seventeen block producers take turns, each making six blocks in a row, and the committee is re-elected every ten minutes. A transaction is included almost instantly, but it becomes irreversible only after more than two-thirds of the producers have confirmed the block. The developer docs put that at about 40 seconds. Live chain data during our research showed the last irreversible block trailing the newest one by about 32 seconds.

So the honest answer is: about half a minute for the chain, plus whatever the exchange adds. Some exchanges credit after their own confirmation count or batch processing, so a deposit can take a few minutes to appear. If it takes much longer, check the transaction on the explorer. If the status is IRREVERSIBLE and the account name and memo are right, the delay is on the exchange’s side. BEP-20 transfers follow BNB Chain’s own timing.

Exchange withdrawal fees and minimums

The network may be free, but exchanges set their own withdrawal fees. These are the figures we could verify. Binance: on the IOST L1 network, a 1 IOST fee with a 2 IOST minimum, memo required. On BEP-20, a 29 IOST fee with a 58 IOST minimum, no memo. Coincheck: 1.0 IOST per its FAQ, L1 only, with transfers between Coincheck users free. Upbit: 0 IOST per its public withdrawal-fee guide, L1 only; worth rechecking in the app. For Bitkub and Indodax we could not confirm the IOST fee or network from official pages, so check their withdrawal screens. The exchange comparison lists the network rules side by side.

A worked example shows why the network choice matters. If you withdraw 1,000 IOST from Binance on L1, 1 IOST goes to the fee and 999 arrive. On BEP-20, 29 IOST go to the fee and 971 arrive. If your destination accepts L1, it is the cheaper road. Status matters as much as price. During the go-iost v4.0.0 upgrade in October 2026, Upbit paused IOST deposits and withdrawals from 21 to 26 Oct, and on 30 Oct Binance still had IOST withdrawals disabled on both networks. A withdrawal page that shows maintenance means wait, not retry.

Checklist before you send IOST

Run through this list before every transfer. It takes less than a minute and covers every common failure we have seen in exchange help pages and support notices.

Track your transfer and check the wallet

After sending, copy the transaction hash from your wallet or exchange history and paste it into the tracker at the top of this page, or open it on iostscan.com, the official L1 explorer. A successful L1 transfer shows the status IRREVERSIBLE, the sending and receiving accounts, the amount and the memo. For BEP-20 transfers, use bscscan.com. Our explorer guide explains every field.

Watch out for look-alike tokens. The L1 token list contains spam tokens with names such as “iiost2”, “iost_” and “fakeiost”. On BNB Chain, copies of the IOST name appear too. The real L1 coin has the symbol iost, and the real BEP-20 token uses the contract above. If a balance appears in your wallet that you did not expect, do not interact with it. The IOST safety guide covers common scams, including fake airdrop claims that ask you to “send IOST to verify”.

If you have not bought any IOST yet, start with the buying guide. It ends exactly where this page begins: with a withdrawal, a network choice and a memo.