Would there be any interest in funding the development of a hardware wallet specific to grin? I’m thinking the design would be fully open and given to the community (PCB design files, Firmware, and desktop/mobile wallet integration), and then any enterprising individuals may order parts to assemble it themselves, or even sell to others.
This is no small task of course, but I want to test the waters and see if there’s community interest in funding such a project.
This is why we have bounties at CC. I think steps are:
Its just short description of steps how development process of CC projects can be represented.
I think it would be more realistic (just less work overall), to find an Open Source Hardware wallet like
Trezor
BitBox (2)
Blockstream Jade
Or another well known hardware wallet and see if they technically (support the right elliptic curve secp256k1, Shnorr signatures etc) can support Grin. Ledger could have been that wallet, not sure why they are fucking up their reputation for nothing with less than transparent services and firmware.
Such a bounty should IMO wait for a >30k Bitcoin, so we use our funds effectively
I can do all of that, if desired. First I wanted to see if there was any community interest in the idea at all.
I agree, but Trezor doesn’t have a secure element. Unless you go the approach of Blockstream’s Jade wallet and their “virtual secure element” approach, its a must to have a secure element these days.
So, even if I started with Trezor, I would need to modify the circuit design files to add a secure element.
BlockStream’s Jade is also a very interesting approach and fully open, so I could just build a custom firmware for the Jade, BUT it would require a specialized companion app (instead of just integrating with the existing wallet apps) and an always-online back end service to provide their “virtual secure element” feature. While I think this is a great approach, I don’t think anyone in this community could run a backend service like that without a clear business model. Otherwise, not having any secure element is again a non-starter.
Virtual secure element is cool idea, but requires to be online, so they are giving 2 options here:
So, you signed up a few months ago now you are asking for funding?
It’s funny you ask now when there is a call to halt cc funding. Why? Are you trying rush in before the door shuts?
How do we know the same person is not making multiple accounts to gain access to grin funding?
Something very, very fishy is going on with the cc funds.
I like the ideas. However, for the moment, I think to have faster Grin adoption, we need to develop something like payment gateway or ecommerce payment for grin, it would be better.
Anyway, in future, when everybody got smartphone, it would not quite necessary having such hardware wallet. We all know Grin is lightweight and scalable, right?
Better have a device in agnostic mode, e.g. a Pinephone or Librem 5 or privacy phone with kill switches which can read slate-packs as QR sign them and show return slate as QR. Better to never have the seed leave the secure offline device/hardware-wallet. Problem is that they are expensive (500$ for Librem 5 or Privacy phone or 200$ for Pinephone or 399 for Pinephone (pro)).
The best would probably be the Pine phone (pro) since it supports many linux OS. I do not have one but I am fairly certain I could compile the grin rust wallet or grin++ client to run on it, so it can be used as sort of hardware wallet, but it does lack a secure element.
The development cost of this would be 0$ 
I agree with you. Grin is mostly for digital-cash and hot wallet. So it would be cool to have more hardware wallet support than just Ledger, but it is not really essential for its daily use.
The solution I propose here would cost nothings, so maybe nice to test it:
I’ve been in this project since the mailing list days, way pre-mainnet. Just not very active in forums until recently. But… why does that matter? If you don’t like the idea, just say so and move on.
Wow, why so toxic? I know the CC funding problems are all you think about, but some of us are more focused on building the tech. I’m not even directly asking for funding. I’m just testing the waters to see if there’s any appetite for the project. I may even choose to raise money from my own sources aside from CC. Take a deep breath and touch some grass… this is just the first step in the ideation of a project. I welcome your criticism and pledge to pursue non-CC funding if the community wants this project but doesn’t want CC involved.
These are good points. I think someone useing a dedicated hardened phone (like a grapheneOS or something) wouldn’t need a hardware wallet. 100%
I think many people aren’t that hardcore, but would still like something more secure than a hot wallet. Maybe not, though, in which case I’ll just sit back down in my corner of the internet, haha
From point of view of an end-user, I expect grin hot/cold wallet to be available/compatible on all types of OS, not only on hardened phone.
How cool would it be if we could do something like this, create a grin hardware wallet from a raspberry pi zero:
Cost are probably very low, the pi zero cost 5$, maybe another 15$ for the case and screen and you would have a hardware wallet for 20 bucks. Optionally, add a camera for QR reading to make it safer but a bit more expensive.
Or the original project:
We are talking about home-made devices, killswitch can be integrated directly on board 
Yeah, they are pretty cool, especially with our own Rust-based OS:
This is why we are using Rust. Same code is working at mobile devices, desktop and browsers without pain of compiling and speed reduction. Same related to UI side, cross-platform development at Rust is what I like the most.
Yes, but I am addressing those who want security. Most people choose not to trust their phones with a lot of money, because its really hard to ensure security. That is the whole reason hardware wallets exist: so you can use whatever phone/computer you want to, without worrying about if/how that phone can secure your keys.
If everyone just wants hot wallets on mobile/pc, then perhaps there’s no sense spending time on a hardware wallet
I like it, but this approach wouldn’t have a secure element, which comes with its own set of tradeoffs. If I took this on, I would only be interested in building a secure product
Secure element comes as separate module, SE050 from NXP (EdgeLock SE050 | Enhanced IoT Security | NXP Semiconductors) as example:
