Wallet Matrix | The Matrix

A wallet fits you like a good pair of shoes. Use the filters below to find a wallet that fits you and your Security, Privacy and Currency needs (among many other things)..

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Wallet Name

Review one or compare several wallets, searching by name.

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Wallet Features

Maintain fine-grained control over your transactions.

Feature Help: Features

Introduction

eatures used for fine-grained control over your transactions that represent a distinct feature or "function" that a particular wallet is able to perform.

Use Cases

If you worked for a company that generated multiple transactions per day as a matter of business, the Batch Transaction wallet-feature might be a consideration for you.

If you regularly transacted with Segwit enabled wallets, then a wallet with support for the Segwit Native Address (SNA) wallet address format would be a requirement for you.

If you or the company you worked for, regularly made payments to recipients who might not want to be publicly associated with you or your company, any one of the Security features in conjunction with the Multisig feature would be of use. Additionally, the ability for your wallet to connect to your company's own Bitcoin Node software (or one belonging to a trusted person such as a director or even an employee's family member for example) via a wallet's Custom Node, might also be a useful feature to consider.

Buy Bitcoin

Which in-app purchase mechanism best suits your needs?

Feature Help: Payment Methods For Purchasing Bitcoin

Introduction

Most people enter into bitcoin ownership in one of a small handful of ways: In-person cash transactions, by earning or by buying from an exchange. Increasingly though, modern wallets allow users to skip the separate exchange experience and buy bitcoin directly from within the app itself. The wallet will still need to use the services of a bitcoin exchange, but does so behind the scenes, attempting to make the on-boarding process as seamless as possible.

There are several payment methods available such as Apple Pay and Google Pay as well as bank transfers. In the case of the latter, each country operates differently in this regard so you'll need to check with the wallet vendor if your desired country permits a particular payment method.

Users do also still need to be mindful of the fact that the purchase is still going through an exchange and as such to be able to continue to legally operate as an exchange, a KYC / AML procedure will still need to take place.

Google Pay

Top up your Bitcoin balance using a balance held within your Google Pay wallet.

Apple Pay

Top up your Bitcoin balance using a balance held within your Apple Pay wallet.

Bank Transfer

Top up your Bitcoin balance using a bank transfer, e.g. via Internet Banking. Note the availability of linking a bank account in this way will be limited by country/jurisdiction. Each region has a different payments clearing and settlements network e.g. ACH (USA), SEPA (Europe), SWIFT and others.

Do your own research first to ensure you're happy with the way in which this feature works and that it suits what you're trying to achieve.

Credit Card

Top up your Bitcoin balance using a credit card. Do your own research first to ensure you're happy with the way in which this feature works and that it suits what you're trying to achieve.

Wire Transfer

This can be an expensive way in which to on-board yourself into Bitcoin, but for some it may be the only way. Do your own research first to ensure you're happy with the way in which this feature works and that it suits what you're trying to achieve.

Debit Card

Depending on the country or region of use, you may be able to use your bank's debit-card from within the app to purchase Bitcoin.

Fastbitcoins

FastBitcoins is a non-custodial Bitcoin exchange and wallets with a fastbitcoins option, allows its users to buy bitcoin in-app, using the fastbitcoins exchange.

Introduction

Wallets support a range of currencies in their user interfaces, usually for displaying an amount of bitcoin funds in your local fiat currency,

A currency refers simply to any supported Fiat Currency like the New Zealand dollar, the European Euro or Argentinian Paeso, as well as any cryptocurrency supported by the wallet such as bitcoin, litecoin or ether.

There is also a third class of currency called a Stablecoin. A stablecoin can possess many features of a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, but the key differentiator is that its value is "pegged" to the current value of one or more fiat currencies - usually the US Dollar. While the number of available services and outlets that accept stablecoins is very few, they are mostly suited for trading and as investment instruments.

Use Cases

A Wallet with support for Euro, Paesos or Dollars and Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin should enable the display of crypto-to-fiat conversions for each of those currencies.

WalletMatrix believes that both fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies should not be made arbitrarily distinct from one another. They are all currencies and function as "money" per the definition of money in terms of its three core features, and one is not going to die-off or replace the other any time soon. As such, both types of currency are considered together in the WalletMatrix system.

Introduction

Bitcoin wallets have traditionally taken the form of apps (software) downloaded onto a smartphone, smartwatch, laptop or a PC. But once you start holding larger amounts, there becomes a need for increasing levels of security measures to be taken. After all, you wouldn't carry thousands of dollars in coins and bills in your pocket each day because of the risk of loss or theft. This is the equivalent of holding even a fraction of a bitcoin in a smartphone app and carrying that around with you every day.

In the traditional money system you'd consider entrusting some kind of institution with larger sums such as a bank holding it in an account on your behalf or perhaps as cash, silver or gold in one of its vaults. But because cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are not centralised, therefore this sort of security is actually up to you to manage and it can be quite a responsibility!

Hardware wallets are designed to provide a level of "cold storage" for holding larger sums. They usually take the form of a USB device and typically plug into a PC (some newer models connect wirelessly over Bluetooth). Many come with their own software that can be installed separately onto a desktop PC or smartphone. A hardware device may have several specific features which may appeal to you depending on the amounts you intend to manage and your current security (and privacy) threat levels.

Note: When installing apps onto your PC for managing your hardware device, take care to only to install them from official sources. The sorts of precautions you should be taking when using internet banking or using any online services securely should be at least good enough to use when checking and downloading the appropriate software.

U2F

Not strictly a Bitcoin-specific feature, U2F (short for Universal 2 Factor) is a protocol supported by some Bitcoin wallets that allows them to double as HSM's (Hardware Security Modules). These devices - popularised by the YubiKey - function as a second authentication factor with compatible services, instead of using insecure SMS, Email or a TOTP (Time-based One TIme Password) application like Google Authenticator.

Touch Screen

Until relatively recently, hardware wallets were entirely operated by physical buttons pressed in specific combinations. Some modern hardware devices now comprise a touch-screen that operates very similarly to the those found on smartphones. This obviously makes it easier to interact with the device's features, and even offer an interface in a language other than US English.

Desktop App

More often that not, a desktop-app is required to be installed on a laptop or PC for managing the hardware device, and reviewing the "accounts" held on it. At least one device we are aware of does not require a computer connection, and as such it is recommended only for more advanced users.

On WalletMatrix, "Desktop App" simply refers to the ability of a device to provide desktop/PC app connectivity, to be downloaded either via the vendor's own website or via selected third parties.

Secure Element

This feature of hardware wallets refers to the fact that your seed words (used to generate "private keys" from which Bitcoin addresses are generated) are stored in an entirely separate and specialised microchip on the device itself. The chip is purposely designed to securely store secrets such as this. Some users prefer to back-up their seed-phrases on an entirely different "air-gapped" device, or even on paper stored in geographically disparate locations.

The decision for you to use such a feature is therefore contingent on some background knowledge, and as such should be considered to be a feature for advanced users only.

Backup

Some hardware wallets allow some aspect of your wallet's data to be backed-up onto a separate device, usually a Micro SD card on which partially signed Bitcoin transactions can be stored for signing completion to occur completely offline for ultimate peace of mind and security.

This feature is of course not very convenient for immediate payments, but as has been noted elsewhere, Hardware devices are intended to be used in "savings" scenarios, not for day to day spending.

Mobile App

Some hardware wallets can be connected to a laptop or desktop computer, or even a smartphone for managing funds and transactions within a familiar environment. The advantage of this setup is that you can see the funds currently managed by your hardware wallet without actually having to connect to it. However you will need to connect to it in order to create and send transactions (via USB or bluetooth) because the private key used to digitally "sign" transactions never leaves the hardware device.

Camera

Some hardware wallets come with a built-in camera for very easy QR code scanning during wallet to wallet transfers. If you'll be regularly transferring funds from a web, custodial or smartphone wallet to your hardware device, choosing one with a camera may prove useful.

BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy)

Hardware wallets with BLE connectivity enable users to quickly and easily connect a compatible computer or smartphone wallet app to the hardware device itself. Hardware wallets are designed to do one thing well, and that's securely hold your private keys. This is extremely important to understand, and is the sole reason hardware wallets exist as distinct devices. They provide an additional layer of security when managing periodic bitcoin transactions. While they aren't designed for day-to-date transacting, being able to combine a smartphone or desktop wallet app with a hardware device via USB or BLE, does provide for faster setup and transaction times than those without. (See "Air Gapped" below).

Air Gapped

"Air gapping" is a way to keep two devices or systems physically separate on a computer network. If no connection exists between each then there's only a very limited range of security problems that may be able to be exploited by those that know what they're doing and all of which involve physical access to the device itself.

In the context of bitcoin hardware wallets, air gapping involves the wallet having limited, restricted or zero connectivity for Bluetooth, Wifi or USB. In such devices, a bitcoin transaction is generated by a software wallet on a smartphone or laptop computer which is then distributed to the hardware wallet whose private key is used to sign the transaction. The distribution method between software and hardware wallets may differ depending on the hardware device itself. Some air-gapped devices do use USB but the connection itself is only able to be used when a PIN is entered into the device, thus providing an additional layer of security. Others comprise a camera so that no physical or network connection is made between device and app and all that's required for transaction signing is the scanning of a QR code using the hardware wallet's own camera.

Introduction

The language as a feature is represented simply as the range of country-specific natural languages that a particular wallet is able to display within its user interface.

Use Cases

The ability to show your wallet balances among other of its features, in a language of your choice within the wallet itself.

Licenses

The software license used by a wallet's source code.

Feature Help: Licenses

Introduction

The software license used by a wallet's source code is mostly of interest to software developers. A software license stipulates the terms under which the code that wallet software is written in, may be used. WalletMatrix prefers wallets released under an Open Source software license, but this is a guideline rather than a rule.

Use Cases

Some licenses are less permissive than others, and may even restrict developers from using a software library or codebase for a commercial product or service altogether.

Introduction

The Lightning Network (Wikipedia) is the first "Layer 2" scaling solution for Bitcoin. Layer 2 is a general label given to additional networks that are layered on top of the Bitcoin base chain. Participants in Layer 2 networks can transact faster than with the base-chain, as they needn't wait for transaction finality to occur (usually 6 confirmations). Lightning makes use of long-running payment channels which when opened and closed, need to anchor those transactions to the Bitcoin base chain.

Once open, a payment channel allows the immediate transfer of bitcoin, making Lightning Payments far more like "digital cash" than the slower on-chain counterpart.

There are several independent features that a Lightning-enabled wallet can have that may sway you toward picking a particular one to use.

Auto Liquidity

Lightning wallet users should not need to concern themselves with the internals of the network itself. When you fire-up your web-browser, the first thing you think about is unlikely to be around how your request for a website is transmitted across the internet. And yet, the ability to open a payment channel with a peer on the network has until very recently been something that users have had to manage themselves.

Wallets that sport an "Auto Liquidity" feature, will automatically take-care of supplying your channel(s) with incoming liquidity sufficient to balance out your channel and allow you to use it.

Routing Node

This is considered an "advanced" user option. Basically, it allows you to put your wallet into "routing mode" and, depending on how the wallet has been designed, can allow you to earn micro bitcoin payments just for routing other people's payment traffic through your wallet-as-node.

Warning: You need to do your own research on this in order to determine bandwidth costs and also the legality of acting as a go-between in the financial transactions of others. Amazingly, the latter may be construed as the wallet owner (you) acting as a money transmitter and as crazy as it sounds, may also require you to apply for a money-transmitter's license. Check in your local jurisdiction as to what the rules are, because as you might imagine, this technology is advancing so rapidly as to render traditional rules and regulations almost irrelevant.

Testnet

This is considered an "advanced" user option. Wallet developers need somewhere safe to test out new features without fear of losing any real-world bitcoin funds. A Testnet does just this. It acts like the real thing, but no actual Mainnet Bitcoin are ever spent.

POS

Short for Point of Sale, some Lightning wallets allow you to setup a smartphone as a POS device in a bricks-and-mortar store, much like cloud-based POS systems like POS-Boss and Vend already do with iPads and smartphones for non-bitcoin payment transactions.

Custom Node

Owning and running your own full Lightning node provides the same level of "self-sovereignty" over your payments as does running a standard full Bitcoin node. (Although you actually end up running both anyway). A Lightning Bitcoin wallet connected to a Lightning Node that you own and run (or owned and run by someone that you know and trust) means you don't need to trust anyone else on the internet. There isn't anything intrinsically wrong with trusting nodes run by others on the internet, but there is always small risk of inaccurate or outdated information being passed along to your Lightning Wallet, malicious or otherwise.

A compatible smartphone wallet will provide you with a screen for configuring the details of your local Lightning Node, which allows the two to communicate with one another.

Lnurl

Lnurl is a protocol for communication between Lightning wallets and third-party Lightning services. It simplifies a range of common payment scenarios not previously possible within the legacy monetary system or indeed the current Bitcoin payments ecosystem. Wallet owners can generate and display customised QR codes that when scanned by payees, gives them the ability to perform some or all of these activities:

Note: A Wallet with Lnurl support may not support all of the features described by the Lnurl specification itself.

Simplified incoming liquidity
Direct withdrawals
Application authorisation
One-off payments

Incoming Liquidity

The Lightning Network is designed for peer to peer payments over virtual "channels" that are opened between a payer and payee. Channels need be "balanced" before they can be used: The same amounts need to be loaded onto both sides of the channel. But this is not something users should need to think about. Lnurl capable wallets can scan a QR code from a 3rd party "liquidity provider" which immediately balances the channel. It's worth noting that some Lightning wallets automatically provide liquidity in the background themselves by using "Liquidity as a service" or "Turbo Channels". You can search for these wallets using the "Auto Liquidity" feature from the "Lightning Features" menu within The Matrix.

Withdrawals

Let's say you hold some funds in a 3rd party Lightning app or service (aka a "Lapp") and would like to withdraw them to your wallet. Simply scan a QR code displayed for you in your account, and the transfer is near instant with no need to copy and paste addresses between apps. Withdrawal actions that are normally only associated with a standard bank account are also possible using a similar procedure: Standing-orders, subscriptions or frequent direct-debits.

Authorisation

By scanning a QR code, users of a Lightning app or service (aka a "Lapp") can login or register with it, without revealing any personally identifying information.

Introduction

Wallets run on phones, watches, desktop or laptop computers or as independent hardware devices. Depending on the platform, a different level of user experience and feature set may be available to you.

A Platform is sometimes bit of a nebulous term which refers to some combination of form factor and operating system. On WalletMatrix it's a term used to describe the operating system only.

Use Cases

Every computer, tablet, smart watch and smartphone has an operating system built into it. Depending on your purchasing patterns and the amount of time you usually spend in front of each of these devices, your choice of wallet software will be dependent on the operating system that these devices have installed on them.

Privacy Features

Minimise the analysis and tracking of your transactions.

Feature Help: Privacy

Introduction

Minimise other's ability to analyse and track your transactions.

Many people don't think enough about their privacy, especially online and mistakenly think about it in terms of having nothing to hide. However, it is better framed as having nothing that you need to share.

It seems every week there are new revelations of data breaches and unauthorised surveillance from social media, e-commerce and traditional banking. Choosing to use Bitcoin for a share of your day-to-day transactions is one way in which to signal your intent to use an alternative to centralised systems, but there is always more that you can do to further anonymise your transactions.

Custom (Own) Node

Every wallet needs to be able to connect to the Bitcoin network for sending and receiving transactions. When such a connection is made, it is made to a "node" usually owned and run by someone else that you've probably never met. It's this node that other nodes, including other mobile wallets, will connect to at some point.

Mobile wallets are usually also nodes themselves, but "lighter" versions known as "SPV" or "Neutrino" which don't need to perform every available validation check on incoming and outgoing transactions that full nodes do.

A mobile wallet will usually connect to the first full node it can find on the Bitcoin Network, but for those wallets that support Custom Nodes (Also known as a Local Node) the wallet allows users to connect to one that they run (or one that is run by someone that they trust such as a family member or close friend for example).

Unlike the traditional banking network which is centralised, the Bitcoin network is decentralised. In this way, the number of individuals and companies that run their own Bitcoin Node software are the network. And while the rules of Bitcoin already prevent bad behaviour on the part of node owners and operators, a Local Node offers total piece of mind. After all, what better way to trust a node operator, than when that operator is you? Take a look at the "Further Information" link below for suppliers of user-friendly full node products that can be ordered over the internet and that accept Bitcoin as payment!

Tor

Using the Tor network layer as a wallet privacy feature, allows all internet traffic sent from your wallet to be fully anonymous. No cookies, IP address or network information can be discerned by the Bitcoin nodes or intermediary services that may carry, process or receive your transaction data over the internet.

CoinJoin

Usually when a Bitcoin transaction is created, there is a fairly simple way for outsiders to review the amount of funds transferred from one wallet address to another. A wallet that supports coinjoin will transmit your payments to the Bitcoin network by combining or "joining" it along with several others. This makes it harder (but not impossible) for third parties to discover which addresses are paying which other addresses.

PayNym

On the Bitcoin network, a PayNym is a publicly shareable identity, like a name or an alias, that is cryptographically associated with a wallet address. Only yours and the recipient's wallet will ever be able to read the address. This is a privacy feature because it prevents analysis of previous transactions and the amounts sent.

Offline Transaction

How might you send a Bitcoin transaction without being connected to the internet? Well a Bitcoin transaction comprises purely digital data, therefore any computer or communications network is capable of transmitting it. Examples of transmission networks, other than the internet that some wallets are capable of using are Mesh Networks and Mobile Phone Networks (via SMS messaging).

One reason you might be interested in offline transactions are if you plan on being located somewhere with no or poor internet connectivity for some time.

No Signup

Some wallets require users to setup an account either to satisfy KYC and AML laws (in the case of custodial wallets) or to offer a range of additional services such as Tweeting money to others or similar with other web-based services. Many people suggest that any requirement to disclose personally identifying information (PII) in order to transact, is the antithesis of Bitcoin itself, because Bitcoin doesn't care who you are, where you are or even what you are. Ideally therefore, Bitcoin wallets should not be requesting any such information.

It's also worth noting is that a wallet's parent company which holds zero information about you, has zero chance of leaking that information to unauthorised third-parties such as hackers. Data-breaches occur daily on the internet and large databases of PII are dumped onto the dark web and sold to the highest bidder more frequently than you'd think. It behoves bitcoin wallet users to take these matters into consideration

But as always "it depends". If you feel that you need a service or set of services provided by a wallet that requires an email address to signup with; then consider using a "burner" address - a disposable email address that is not tied to you in any way.

Introduction

Your bitcoin funds are your responsibility so you it follows that you should probably be taking your wallet security seriously too.

Security is a far-reaching and detailed topic in its own right, for which there are already many good resources on the web.

All Bitcoin wallets offer a wide range of security features, but it can be hard to know which of these offer protections that are valid for scenarios you can envisage finding yourself in. This last point is very important to consider. What's the point in going to the nth degree to secure your funds, if all you're ever likely to hold are a few Satoshis? (A Satoshi represents a one-hundred millionth of a single bitcoin). On the other hand, what's the point in not securing your funds if you wish to manage multiple bitcoin? (hopefully via one or more hardware wallets).

It's important to understand one of the fundamental differences between currencies such as bitcoin and the Dollars, Euro, Yen or Paeso that you may be familiar with: A traditional bank may be able to refund you should you lose funds via unauthorised persons discovering your internet banking password or via stealing or skimming your credit card. But with cryptocurrencies, the burden of security is on you. If you lose access to your Bitcoin wallet by losing the Seed Phrase (Used to generate the private keys that it securely maintains on your behalf), then you have lost that Bitcoin forever. You only need to Google "Lost Bitcoin" to read some saddening stories of thousands of US Dollars worth of bitcoin having been lost forever, due to poor security.

Depending on the frequency with which you wish to use bitcoin for payments and the amount you wish to hold in bitcoin, you may choose to be more or less security conscious and therefore select from a subset of the total range of security features offered by currently available wallets.

Fake Wallet

This security feature allows you to create what appears to be a genuine wallet with a genuine wallet balance, but is in fact only a facade, containing perhaps only a fraction of your total bitcoin funds. This confers a "plausible deniability" ability onto users in a "5 dollar wrench" attack scenario.

Pin On Wallet

This security feature allows users to set a secret PIN on the wallet itself, which needs to be manually entered into a wallet, before being able to use it or any of its features.

Pin On TX

This security feature allows users to set a secret PIN for each transaction, which needs to be manually entered into a wallet before being able to send any transactions.

Encrypted Password

A wallet with an encrypted password feature will simply store the password in question in an encrypted form on the device itself, therefore rendering a stolen device such as a smartphone, useless to a thief or attacker who isn't also in possession of the cryptographic keys used to perform the encryption itself.

Dust Protection

Unlike most decimal currencies that are divisible only to two decimal places, and usually employing a separate currency denomination e.g. Dollars and Cents, or Pounds and Pence; bitcoin is divisible to eight decimal places, each unit of which is known as a Satoshi. This immediately allows for very fine-grained payments called "micropayments" and Dust is the word generally used to describe extremely small amounts of bitcoin, usually in the context of receiving change from a bitcoin transaction at around the 1000 Satoshi mark (0.00000001 Bitcoin).

Scrambled Pin

Wallets offering a scrambled PIN feature will scramble the digits on any PIN-entry screen, to confound screen-reading and key logging malware that could be present on a mobile device. Whenever the PIN-entry screen is displayed, the keypad will arrange each digit differently each time.

2 Factor Authentication

A wallet that features two factor authentication (2FA) will require you to use at least 2 different means (factors) of verifying that you have permission to either open a wallet or create and send a transaction on that wallet. It depends on the wallet itself as to how exactly this feature is implemented.

Keyless

Ordinarily almost every wallet you'll come across will prompt you to store a set of 12 or 24 words known as a "seed" or "seed phrase" or "wallet seed" the first time you use it. This seed is used by your wallet to derive a cryptographic key which in turn is used to generate unlimited payment addresses. If you lose your wallet or it's stolen, then a new wallet can be easily purchased or downloaded and the funds associated with the former can be re-instated within the latter.

This is n amazingly useful feature except that you need to keep the seed somewhere secure away from the wallet itself. Often this means writing it down on a piece of paper, stamping it on some sort of indestructible steel device or material and storing that somewhere safe like a lock box or bank vault.

With a Keyless wallet however there is no single private key stored in a single location. Instead the key is derived from multiple, geographically separate and cryptographically produced pieces and assembled from each piece whenever they're needed, e.g. when your wallet digitally "signs" transactions on your behalf when making a payment. Only a small handful of wallets implement private key management in this way and there are criticisms of the underlying system they usually use to achieve it.

Touch ID

A wallet with a Touch ID security feature allows it to authenticate either for a making a transaction or for opening the wallet itself, with the use of a finger or thumbprint. If you have a recent Apple or Android smartphone, you'll probably already be familiar with this feature.

Login Countdown

A Login Countdown simply locks users out of a wallet app if a PIN code or password challenge has not been completed within a particular time-frame. If the countdown expires, users are required to re-do the process of authentication.

Brick PIN

You can consider this a "feature of last resort". If wallet users find themselves under duress such as during an in-person attack of some kind, they can "brick" the wallet (rendering it as useful as a brick) by entering a special PIN. The wallet is then left completely unusable by an attacker or anyone else. Once in a place of safety, all users need to do to, to "rebuild" their wallet (and all the funds it managed) by downloading and installing a new wallet app and pass it their 12 or 24 word seed phrase.

Face ID

Some wallet apps will only allow access to funds and wallet features after scanning your face. This is a highly secure way to access a wallet. However, you are providing personal data to the app when you do this and without knowing what the app actually does with the resulting data or image; as with any feature that requires personal information, you should do your own research first. A really good way to start is to also search for wallets that have been certified as "Reproducible". You can select this option from the "Wallet Features" menu in The Matrix.

Remote Wipe

Wallets with a remote-wipe feature allow users to send "commands" from a remote location to a Bitcoin wallet installed on a Smartphone for example. The command will completely delete the wallet from that particular phone if a particular text message is sent to a particular number. This is a useful security feature to have, but for it to be utilised, an attacker or thief does need to know the PIN (or face/touch-id) of your wallet first, to even be able to get into the wallet in the first place. A system of remote-wiping can therefore be seen as a useful backup security feature.

Withdrawal Limit

Wallets with a withdrawal limit will prevent Bitcoin funds transfers above a specified limit. For example, wallet users might configure a limit of 50,000 Satoshi (0.0005 Bitcoin) that is able to be withdrawn (sent) from that wallet. This is a useful security feature to have, but for it to be utilised, an attacker or thief does need to know the PIN (or face/touch-id) of your wallet first, to even be able to get into the wallet in the first place. A withdrawal limit can therefore be seen as a useful backup security feature.

Introduction

So called "soft" features of a wallet such as product support and privacy statements actually come from the company behind the wallet. WalletMatrix refers to these as "vendors". Various recent and historical hacks and attacks on bitcoin exchanges and wallet companies have lead to Bitcoin users requesting more transparency from vendors. This searchable feature therefore is not a feature of the wallet per se, but a link to further information on the vendor's website.

Data Retention

It is important for wallet users to understand how exactly data they may have knowingly or unknowingly provided to a wallet is used by the vendor and in what way. From a vendor's perspective, it is in their best interests to hold as little information about you as possible, and for as short a time as possible. Following this protocol is a mitigation against data breaches and hacks. A vendor providing a link to their data-retention policies is a vendor that has given this some thought and appears to want to be as transparent as possible with users as to to how they deal with the data they do collect.

Product Support

Especially true for hardware wallet vendors is that the physical device they've produced can occasionally malfunction or behave in an unpredictable way. It might even just be plain broken! Just like anything else you buy at a physical or online store, you need to know where you stand with regard to product support.

Introduction

Particular types of transaction, suit particular types of wallet.

A wallet app or hardware wallet may divide itself into independent "accounts: or "wallets" where each one designed for a specific purpose. This is analogous to a customer having several accounts within a bank such as a chequing, savings or revolving credit account. Or, to use a personal analogy; the use of a traditional personal wallet, money pouch or purse that may have a zipped pocket for coins, a wider slot for notes or bills and several smaller slots for credit, debit, barter and store cards.

You might use coins from the zipped pocket to pay for coffee or food at a market. You might use a chip-and-pin or EFTPOS card to pay for lunch and a credit card to pay for a new kitchen appliance such as a fridge or a used car. Each of these is a different form of payment designed to provide users with different features. The same is also true for individual software wallets within an app, computer or hardware device.

Use Cases

An On Chain wallet can usually be thought of as the default provided by most cryptocurrency wallet software and devices. It allows users to immediately send and receive peer to peer payments with the users of other wallets.

A BRD Wallet offers functionality or compatibility with the BRD wallet.

A Single Address wallet provides a wallet for which there is only ever a single address. This might be useful for example if you're accepting one-off payments as tips from your website (or your github account if you're a developer), although this sort of wallet is no longer recommended for privacy reasons.

An HD wallet can be thought of as the opposite of Single Use wallets. HD wallets will generate a new address every time you send funds from it These days most "default" wallet-types in apps are already HD "aware". If you're interested, "HD" stands for "Hierarchical Deterministic" which is a reference to the underlying cryptographic principles these wallets use.

Watch Only wallets allow wallet users to monitor activity for an address or collection of addresses. They won't let you spend from them or receive payments to them, rather they're more of use to advanced users who may want to observe the transactions that occur to or from any Bitcoin address, which needn't be one that they own.

Introduction

Wallets can be used on different types of device.

A Mobile form-factor usually denotes a Smartphone or tablet app that is downloaded from an app store like Apple's iTunes.
A Desktop form-factor usually means software that can only be installed on a desktop operating system like Microsoft Windows, Ubuntu Linux or Apple's OSX.
A Hardware form-factor indicates a special kind of highly secure wallet, usually in the form of a separate USB device.
Some wallets are also available to be installed onto Smart Watches. They can be found by searching under the Wearable form-factor option.

Use Cases

With the ubiquity of Smartphones these days in almost all economies of the world, a software Mobile wallet installed as an app on your phone or tablet is probably going to suit you best for day-to-day use.

If you're in front of a laptop of desktop computer for lengthy periods and/or you usually do some or all of your shopping online, a Desktop wallet may suit.

For more advanced users, users with significant Bitcoin holdings or users for whom security is utterly paramount, the use of a hardware device about the size of a standard USB thumb-drive as a Hardware wallet, is usually the way to go.

In addition to measuring footsteps and heart-rate, you can also make purchases with Bitcoin and Lightning using your Wearables such as your Apple Watch.

Introduction

Ensure that your transactions stick to the rules of network.

Validation is one process that wallets perform when sending and receiving payments. Validation ensures that individual payments cannot break the rules of the network. Bitcoin is a "trustless" network of participants, humans and computers (known as "nodes") and in the case of a smartphone wallet app, your phone is also acting as a special kind of node.

Some wallets perform a minimal set of validation checks; these are designated as SPV (Simple Payment Verification) nodes and they represent a large proportion of available smartphone wallet apps, because SPV validation is very fast, and requires comparatively little data to be downloaded from the Bitcoin blockchain.

Other wallets will defer the validation process to a dedicated full node (usually hosted on a dedicated computer or a server) that it connects to, and which is located elsewhere on the Bitcoin network. This is done in order to perform a greater range of validation checks. Wallets that behave this way are known as Fully Validating.

You might select a wallet based on a particular form of validation for reasons of overall network health or for your own security reasons. A fully validating node will validate all transactions and will ensure network consensus rules are being adhered-to.

Importantly: Such a wallet cannot be tricked into receiving malformed payments.

Many wallets that have Lightning Network integration will use Neutrino payment validation. Unlike SPV, which only performs a subset of the possible range of validation tasks because for reasons of speed, it only ever receives a small amount of the available data from the network. Neutrino validation is able to perform a wider range of validation on more data, due to the advanced data compression it employs.

Some wallets will be fully-validating, but only by proxy - in that they run an instance of a Bitcoin Full Node on their own servers. Selecting the Via Own Servers validation option, will return you wallets of this kind.