After experiencing four hardware wallets, here are some suggestions for buying hardware wallets

In the past few years in the blockchain industry, I have used many hardware wallets, made paper wallets, and used brain wallets. Of course, I have also tried to make cold wallets with mobile phones. Now the market has launched a currency withdrawal movement. Many people want to save their own coins in hardware wallets. Today, I will share some suggestions on purchasing hardware wallets.

First tier: Ledger and Trezor are suitable for professional users

Ledger and Trezor are the hottest and most popular hardware wallets on the market. Of course, these two brands also have distinct characteristics. The first is that the code is open source. The second is that they have been deeply involved in the industry for many years and have very good technical skills. The third is that they support more currencies and public chains, which is suitable for professional users to withdraw coins from exchanges to wallets. It may not be particularly friendly to novices, but of course the learning cost is not too high. If you buy it, you should be able to play it a few times.

However, because they are big brands, sometimes there will be phishing software specifically targeting these two brands of wallets to deceive, so this is a problem. This is what I said before, it is suitable for professional users, because professional users have a very strong awareness of password and usage protection, so the probability of theft will be minimized.

The wallet also has distinct features and supports multiple currencies. In addition, the support for many currencies is basically applications made by the project party itself. For example, we can see that the metamask plug-in wallet supports ledger and trezor functions. In other words, you can use ledger and trezor to perform DeFi operations, which is a function that many wallets do not have.

For example, I have previously discovered that some project parties will specifically develop wallet programs that are compatible with ledger or trezor. Users only need to connect the hardware wallet to the computer and open the wallet software provided by the project party to use these two hardware wallets. This to a certain extent shows that these two hardware wallets are still very popular.

The second tier: old brands such as keepkey, cobo, Kushen, and BitShield, suitable for ordinary users

This type of wallet manufacturer is also relatively well-known. They have been working in the field of digital currency wallets for several years and have accumulated some technology. Of course, for them, the types of digital currencies supported by digital currency wallets may not be so extensible, but basically they also support some mainstream public chains, and the team will continue to provide program updates and firmware update functions, which is a good thing.

However, compared with first-tier wallets such as ledger or trezor, their wallets may have poor scalability. They cannot be connected to computer plug-in wallets in real time and cannot be used for defi application operations or dapp operations, which is a pity.

Of course, for ordinary users, this is basically enough. The main functions of this type of wallet are actually receiving and issuing coins. The support for subsequent new currencies is also developed by the wallet itself, rather than supported by the currency project party. There are still some differences here. Therefore, this type of wallet often has better support for mainstream old currencies, but may not have such good support for new public chain currencies. Therefore, this type of wallet is suitable for ordinary users, and is used for receiving and issuing coins.

The third tier: other emerging brands

Since 2019, many new brands of hardware wallets have emerged. There are many brands and types, just like our mobile phone market in previous years. There are a lot of regular brands and counterfeit brands, and some are not cheap, costing seven or eight hundred or even a thousand yuan.

This type of wallet does not seem to have any major problems in use. Because it is a niche brand, the subsequent firmware upgrades may not be kept up by every hardware wallet team. The prices range from cheap to expensive, and the supported currencies are also varied. Some even carry private goods. Therefore, the author believes that the circle of emerging brands is still relatively chaotic.

I personally don’t particularly recommend buying this type of wallet unless you think it’s worth buying. For example, if you just like the brand, then there’s nothing you can do about it. After all, no one knows who the team behind it is. Moreover, the source code of wallets from major brands is now public, which means anyone can make a wallet. However, code disclosure and whether the code has vulnerabilities are two different things, so you should still be cautious.

Another point is that emerging brands have not yet established a firm foothold in the market, so generally speaking, it may be difficult to open up the market. In this case, unless you know the development team, I would not recommend it. What if the team leaves a backdoor one day and steals the coins and runs away, you will have no way to stop them.

Finally, let’s analyze the user groups of hardware wallets. In fact, the users of hardware wallets mainly have certain needs for storing coins, and also have the needs to issue coins or use applications such as dapp and defi. Therefore, they buy hardware wallets. For those who generally hoard coins, that is, those who only make money but not spend it, there is actually not much need to buy hardware wallets. They can just make a cold wallet themselves.

There are two ways to make a cold wallet. The first one is to generate a paper wallet offline and then print it. In this way, you only deposit coins and do not withdraw coins. When you withdraw coins at the end, you withdraw them all at once. In this way, the paper wallet has completed its historical mission.

Of course, if you find it troublesome, you can use a discarded mobile phone to make one, which is also very simple. Turn off the mobile phone's WiFi and other networking functions, then download the wallet program, generate a wallet, and save it. However, there is a disadvantage of using a mobile phone to make a wallet, which is the problem of the mobile phone battery. If it breaks down one day, the wallet will be gone. Therefore, when making a mobile phone wallet, you still have to keep the mnemonic phrase and private key well.

In addition, there used to be imtoken on the Internet that was used as a mobile cold wallet and supported the coin issuance function. This was also used by many people and was actually quite convenient. The principle was to use a QR code to transmit signature data, etc., so that transactions could be carried out, as shown in the figure:

Theoretically, this method can be used for all currencies including new coins, but this method may threaten the business of some hardware wallet manufacturers, so it has not been widely promoted in recent years. Therefore, only a few are currently used in the market, and the supported currencies are also limited. Therefore, if the requirements are not high, you can try it.

My own experience with using a hardware wallet

Hardware wallets are used according to individual needs. For example, if we want to experience advanced features such as DeFi, we can only choose ledger or trezor, and don’t consider others. If you just want to store coins, then hardware wallets, paper wallets, and cold wallets will do. If you want to send and receive coins, then except for paper wallets, all others will do.