Let’s take a look under the hood of some crypto wallets.

Wallets are a dime a dozen. However they exist in some sort of strange quantum state where projects that shouldn’t be releasing wallets are, and those that should, like some billion dollar ICO’s have and are taking excessive amounts of time rolling theirs out.

What should we be looking at when examining a wallet?

My criteria has always been simple and it covers the following criteria:

1. Is it easy to use?
2. Does it respect your privacy?
3. Is it secure?
4. Is it lightweight?
5. Does it adequately use notifications?
6. Does it have any useful additional functions?
7. Does it adequately communicate the security risks in a manner that makes sense.

Let’s get right to it…

ABRA

Type: Multi Token Wallet

1. The interface is reasonably easy to use, there were some questions I had which were not intuitively answered by the design and descriptions and that is whether a single passphrase was adequate to restore all the wallets, or if they needed to be backed up individually.
2. Wallets that request personal information without giving you an adequate reason why they are requesting this information, make me worry a bit. There are use-cases for it, like 2FA (2 Factor Authentication) where the wallet will need a mechanism to communicate with you outside of the wallet ecosystem, however it needs to be clear to the user before or at the time he is requested to provide such information on why it is being requested, and how it is going to be stored, and who will have access to it.
3. From a security perspective it is driven by a PIN, and a Seed Phrase Word List. There is no option to secure the wallet using your smartphones biometric scanners which could have been an easy win but it was not used.
4. The personal questions seem to have added a few steps to the process of registering your wallets and getting use out of it in the quickest amount of time, so from that perspective there is bloat, but not bloat in the sense of additional features that would be useless to the majority of users.
5. There do not seem to be any notification settings nor notifications running in terms of wallet activity when the wallet is running in the background.
6. The one thing I do like about this wallet, is that it has an in wallet exchange which means that you do not need to transfer funds out of it to exchange between different tokens, you can do that within the wallet ecosystem which means that at all times you are in control of your own private keys and thus do not need to seed control for an extended time to any given third party exchange.
7. It’s communication of security risks is adequate, and it does prompt you not to screenshot your keys which is one of the larger risks when it comes to private key management.

Trust Wallet

Type: Multi Token Wallet

1. The interface is reasonably easy to use, as with the ABRA wallet when I initially set it up, there were some questions I had which were not intuitively answered by the design and descriptions and that is whether a single passphrase was adequate to restore all the wallets, or if they needed to be backed up individually.
2. Trust did not ask for any personal information on formation of the wallet.
3. From a security perspective it is driven by touch id, and a backup seed phrase which is great.
4. The wallet is sleek and to the point, there is no bloat.
5. There are notification settings, which allow you to turn background activity notifications on or off, which is perfect.
6. The wallet has a DApps browser which allows access to a rich list of distributed applications, what I didn’t like is that you need to leave the core app, as it is using an in-built browser, from a security perspective I have never been comfortable with those environments, even know I understand it adds to the flexibility of the offering.
7. It’s communication of security risks is adequate, and it does not prompt you not to screenshot your keys which is one of the larger risks when it comes to private key management, that would be a quick win if they added that in.

Toast Wallet

Type: Single Token Wallet (XRP — Ripple)

1. The interface is not intuitive, the color scheme, fonts & icons are not well thought out and they affect the presentation and usability of the application.
2. Toast did not ask for any personal information on formation of the wallet.
3. From a security perspective it is driven by a PIN, and a Seed Phrase Word List. There is no option to secure the wallet using your smartphones biometric scanners which could have been an easy win but it was not used.
4. The wallet is not heavily bloated, but there is a screen requesting donations which is a little out of place, and makes it look a little desperate, if this was tucked away in the menu, it would have been better, I am all for supporting developers however it should not come across as begging.
5. There are no visible notification settings, which allow you to turn background activity notifications on or off.
6. The app allows you to submit an offline transaction, for the majority of users however this isn’t a feature that would be commonly used.
7. It’s communication of security risks is adequate, they have added a little too much of it in different shades all over the place, what would have been a bit better would be targeted pop-ups.

imToken Wallet

Type: Multi Token Wallet

1. The interface is reasonably easy to use, as with the ABRA wallet when I initially set it up, there were some questions I had which were not intuitively answered by the design and descriptions and that is whether a single passphrase was adequate to restore all the wallets, or if they needed to be backed up individually.
2. Trust did not ask for any personal information on formation of the wallet.
3. From a security perspective it is driven by touch id, and a backup seed phrase which is great.
4. The wallet is sleek and to the point, there is no bloat.
5. There are no notification settings, which allow you to turn background activity notifications on or off.
6. The wallet has a DApps browser as with trust wallet, which allows access to a rich list of distributed applications, I didn’t like is that you need to leave the core app, as it is using an in-built browser, from a security perspective I have never been comfortable with those environments, even know I understand it adds to the flexibility of the offering.
7. It’s communication of security risks is well done, and it does prompt you not to screenshot your keys which is one of the larger risks when it comes to private key management.

Airbitz Wallet

Type: Single Token Wallet (BTC)

1. The interface is reasonable, the color scheme and character that represents the bitcoin logo could have been better thought out, an image would have been better, it was so off the mark that I was questioning if it was a bitcoin wallet.
2. This wallet doesn’t request personal information, but does require you to set up a username and password which will just lead to too many additional items to retain, pin/biometrics and seed phrase would have been adequate.
3. From a security perspective it is driven by a PIN and touch id, username and password, and a Seed Phrase Word List. The username and password is overkill.
4. There is definitely bloat in this, you can access gift cards, pre-paid top-ups etc, I can see the utility however, my personal belief is that these types of offerings should be in a separate app, not marketed as a wallet, but as a bitcoin portal for services.
5. There do not seem to be any notification settings nor notifications running in terms of wallet activity when the wallet is running in the background.
6. There is access as mentioned above to additional services, however they are not relevant to the use of the wallet specifically (price charts etc would have been more useful).
7. t’s communication of security risks is adequate, and it does not prompt you not to screenshot your keys which is one of the larger risks when it comes to private key management, that would be a quick win if they added that in.

Bitcoin.com Wallet

Type: Single Token Wallet (BTC)

1. The interface is reasonably easy to use, icons, fonts and color scheme were well thought out.
2. Trust did not ask for any personal information on formation of the wallet.
3. From a security perspective it is driven by touch id, and a backup seed phrase which is great. It also has an option for a pin, however both ouch id and pin options were disabled by default which wouldn’t have been my first choice, touch id should be a default setting.
4. The wallet is sleek and to the point, there is no bloat.
5. There are notification settings, which allow you to turn background activity notifications on or off, which is perfect.
6. The wallet has price charts, news, access to the mining pool for analytics.
7. It’s communication of security risks is adequate, and it does not prompt you not to screenshot your keys which is one of the larger risks when it comes to private key management, that would be a quick win if they added that in.

This is my second medium article referring to wallets, if you would like to see the other wallets that have previously been reviewed you can utilize this following link:

Comparing Hot Wallets, so you don't get burned.

I hope you found this article useful, if so please click on the applause icon, otherwise please comment below to provide some feedback so I can improve my approach if need be.