[Pre-Proposal] The Dash Hardware Wallet

[GrandMasterDash]

I think you already came up with a solution for this, didn't you?

Today: everyone who carries a Trezor might be identified as "someone with the money" (why would he own such thing otherwise?).

Tomorrow: if everyone carries a hardware wallet, we're fine, because we can't see whether theres $1 or $1,000,000 in it.

Just like today, all of us carry a normal wallet with some bills in it. Just the view of a wallet in your pants doesn't make your a target of abduction. At least not in most countries.

Sorryyyy, but I disagree. The first mobile phone users were targets, but even today it is common for people to be mugged for their phone; it will get sold on as a burner phone. Money on a HW, regardless how little, will be used as burner money. People get knifed for just $1, why should that mentality change with HW wallets? If people are only carrying small amounts - in software or HW - then why bother with the HW? - just continue to use your phone multi-wallet. Forget online bank hacks.. the real danger is, you'll be carjacked, kidnapped or held hostage in your own home because now you are your own bank, like everyone else.

 

[solarguy]

ok tx for the explanations
open source aside
u personal have no plans to integrate other coins after ?

He has convinced me he has no plans or desire to facilitate any other coin to make or use this product.

But, as he correctly noted, it's open source (which is a deal maker/breaker for me) so others could use the information and put in their own money and effort to knock it off. But not easily.

And we still have first mover advantage, and the deal is structured in such a way that Dash owns the project and the finished product. He does not.

 

[solarguy]

Sorryyyy, but I disagree. The first mobile phone users were targets, but even today it is common for people to be mugged for their phone; it will get sold on as a burner phone. Money on a HW, regardless how little, will be used as burner money. People get knifed for just $1, why should that mentality change with HW wallets? If people are only carrying small amounts - in software or HW - then why bother with the HW? - just continue to use your phone multi-wallet. Forget online bank hacks.. the real danger is, you'll be carjacked, kidnapped or held hostage in your own home because now you are your own bank, like everyone else.

Having traveled in Honduras, where houses are often built like a compound with a big wall with sharp broken glass embedded in the top and hefty gates made of iron bars that get securely locked at night, I get your security concerns.

And it might be a very worthwhile thread discussion about risk assessment and mitigation for various situations and places. Most folks from the US, Canada and the EU have no idea how different the risk profile is in the rest of the world.

But I'm not convinced this is his problem to solve. Or, certainly not primarily his job. And realistically, right now and in the foreseeable future, 99.999% of bad guys wouldn't even recognize the device as something with value on it. The border guards, maybe a real concern.

 

[vitaly]

every day the pockets of my jeans are packed fully: leather wallet, phone, apartment keys, car keys
if I wear another such thing, I'll go crazy)
but I agree that a smartphone today is a security hole, as well as a windows user should take care of their own security

I stick to the concept of storing on the phone a sufficient amount of coins for pizza and coffee

 

[GrandMasterDash]

@solarguy I agree and my comments about personal security was a tangent and just a point of view I feel very strongly about.

 

[vitaly]

but if the community decides that such a development is necessary for the future, then I will change my mind, maybe in the future such device will become much thinner, smaller and lighter? and if such device will be like a radio-tag in my "watch pocket jeans"?

 

[roland]

but if the community decides that such a development is necessary for the future, then I will change my mind, maybe in the future such device will become much thinner, smaller and lighter? and if such device will be like a radio-tag in my "watch pocket jeans"?

For a hardware wallet to make any sense, it must have a screen, so even if it fits in your watch pocket jeans, it needs to be taken out when making a transaction.

And sure, those devices will get better in the future. But is that a reason to stay away from my proposal? No, because what I propose is already much, much better than what's available today.

My core point is: if we want to promote Dash, Dash must better. We must be better than the others. We must innovate. We must not wait for innovation on "multi coin wallets" to happen, because they will never be "Dash first".

We are so lucky that we have the core team that does a lot of innovation on the core blockchain side of things. Maybe I'm just a technical guy at the end, but it hurts me a little when I see all the possibilities that could be enabled by the Dash treasury, and yet the active proposals are 90% ad and marketing campaign stuff. Sure that's necessary. But we shouldn't forget that all these ads and marketing campaigns only work because they argue with the innovations Dash created beforehand (InstantSend, PrivateSend, ...). We shouldn't fall short of delivering such innovations. If that happens, the Google of today becomes the Yahoo of tomorrow.

 

[UdjinM6]

Interesting proposal, few points though:
1) CoolWallet https://www.coolbitx.com/ NFC, BLE, credit card size. But it's ~$100 avg (a bit more for a pack of one, a bit less per device if you order a pack of 2) and it doesn't support Dash atm ("Our focus is only on Bitcoin for now, but we might support other cryptocurrencies in the future.").
2) You gave a nice overview of the project but as some people already noted it's hard to jump in and fund someone claiming he can start producing 10K units of some non-existing device. I would really recommend to create few smaller proposals instead e.g.
- design phase,
- producing PoC devices (10-100 units),
- improving and producing medium size batch (100-1000 units),
- main batch (10000 units)
This way you can prove you can do this, get feedback early and fix possible issues found in PoC devices and later in medium batch without blowing up the main batch OR stop the project asap completely without wasting too much money if idea proves itself to be not as good as expected (no interest, usability issues, hardware issues, app issues, etc).
3) Design is a bit controversial imo. I'd rather see a taller/wider but slimmer device. Also, I imagine one would use it with one hand if you consider it to be a pocket device for small purchases, and if so, imo vertical layout would make much more sense (again, see CoolWallet as an example).

 

[jimbursch]

Build and demonstrate a prototype and your proposal is a slam dunk (pardon the Americanism). How much would it cost to get to that stage?

Right now you are trying to sell me a picture of a cardboard box and a bunch of promises. Granted, proposals get funded with a lot less, but if you can do what you say you can do, I have confidence you can come up with a terrific prototype that would make this proposal a no-brainer.

 

[solarguy]

Perhaps if you could show us some of your other work, that would also help to assure us that you accomplish stuff right up to certification and production.

And really, the ultimate cost per unit is very reasonable.

I would be interested to know the size of the market. Anybody have any notion of how many Trezors are out there?

 

[MizzyMax]

Posted this on Reddit but I'm not sure the proposal owner saw it so:

100% support here! What Evan Duffield is planning on doing with creating Node Hardware is to make it completely open source so that anyone can jump in and easily build it themselves and improve upon it and profit off it. It's creates competition and gets rid of the monopoly aspects of it. I would definitely suggest doing that.


hardware wallets were just the start of a portable wallet, I knew it was going to grow into hardware that would allow you to pay a merchant. I must say Dash becoming the first to have hardware specifically designed to store Dash and make payments in Dash would be huge and a total game changer.


you already have an A in my book for knowing that using Bluetooth is much more efficient than using a USB connection. Apple got rid of the aux cord and switched to Bluetooth only. It makes for more space inside the hardware along with ease of use.

 

[MizzyMax]

Tbh, I can fully appreciate why people like @tungfa are satisfied with their trezor.. it's perfectly adequate for the crypto crowd. But equally, you are suggesting this will be easier to use than a trezor. I think what I really want to see is a good demonstration / walkthrough, showing us how exactly how it would function and especially in a post Evolution setup, because you have raised questions about username to address issues.

I think you need to make clear the precise use case for this because if you envisage this as a dash only, standalone device for buying coffee, then I struggle to see it being successful. The reality is, end users are levitating towards multi-currency wallets. Or they are using contactless crypto debit cards that will one day (hopefully) bypass visa / mastercard. In fact, ShapeShift's recent acquisition of KeepKey has expressly said they intend to ramp up the number of cryptos they support. And given it's Erik Voorhees behind it, I am sure he will insist on a super easy user experience. So that's what I think you have to convince us of, that your product can go head-to-head with the best.

Remember that cryptocurrency allows for transactions peer to peer, having a crypto debit card isn't peer to peer and actually dumps crypto off the market.

I think the main reason Dash exclusivity could easily exist is because of instant send. Creating hardware meant to perform payments peer to peer should be instant, and no other coins have that ability so with that alone Dash could have a hold on this market and other coins would be able to compete. I think Dash does need a way for the consumer to pay the merchant and this could easily be it.

As for competing with the best, I think he's already a step ahead with making the device Bluetooth only and no USB connection. It's not only safer, but it's more user friendly. That alone is a great concept I would like to see rolled out, and I believe he could easily have more great ideas planned as well.

 

[GrandMasterDash]

Remember that cryptocurrency allows for transactions peer to peer, having a crypto debit card isn't peer to peer and actually dumps crypto off the market.

I think the main reason Dash exclusivity could easily exist is because of instant send. Creating hardware meant to perform payments peer to peer should be instant, and no other coins have that ability so with that alone Dash could have a hold on this market and other coins would be able to compete. I think Dash does need a way for the consumer to pay the merchant and this could easily be it.

As for competing with the best, I think he's already a step ahead with making the device Bluetooth only and no USB connection. It's not only safer, but it's more user friendly. That alone is a great concept I would like to see rolled out, and I believe he could easily have more great ideas planned as well.

I fully understand the crypto debit cards are a stepping stone, though keep in mind the final push to crypto-only is going to be difficult due to government interference. You only have to look at the recent ICO fiascos to see that society is full of yes-men that would rather appease governments than fight them.

As for the technicals, did you see the CoolWallet link provided above? Actually, I had forgotten about it but I think it serves a good comparison. Also, there are a number of programmable cards on the market that clone / emulate existing cards (combining multiple cards into one) . Thus, a combination of both concepts would be a logical step to take. Add the necessary function of multi-crypto support... give it some classy dash branding... and you'd have a product I would buy in an instant.

The reality is, people don't want multiple devices, they just want one product that supports nearly everything.

 

[camosoul]

Some have suggested that there be multiple passwords, one of which would reveal that you have 8 dollars worth of Dash on the device.

Trezor already does this.

With passwords enabled, the password acts essentially as the 25th word of the root seed. Any password you type in has it's own HD tree the instant you type it.

You could make one up on the spot, and show zero money. Which matches your story. Because who would physically carry it across a border and risk dealing with these regulations (corruption), when it could just as easily be sent later...? Someone else could send it to you. You could have your own cloud wallet behind tor... There's tons of ways to not break that law regardless of "their" ability to discover it or not.

Or, yeah, you could have some small amount so that "they" can "find" it and be satisfied. That would be advisable simply so that your entire history isn't revealed... You're required to declare certain amounts, not every duff since the beginning of time.

I don't see the advantage of an IX or IS enabled hardware wallet. I... just don't.

I do like the idea of an encrypted bluetooth/NFC comm system though. No wires. But, this means battery.

Has the OP considered the realities of making the hardware secure, even if dissected? Simply sticking a micro-controller in a box that says "DASH HARDWARE WALLET" on it doesn't do the job...

 

[roland]

Interesting proposal, few points though:
1) CoolWallet https://www.coolbitx.com/ NFC, BLE, credit card size. But it's ~$100 avg (a bit more for a pack of one, a bit less per device if you order a pack of 2) and it doesn't support Dash atm ("Our focus is only on Bitcoin for now, but we might support other cryptocurrencies in the future.").

CoolWallet is a really nice bit of hardware. I can basically feel what the hardware designers were ask to create when they designed this thing. And they did a good job on that.

However: you should be glad that thing doesn't support Dash and hope it never will. Because the design is seriously flawed to the extend where the device is practically useless. Because in their obvious design effort to get is as slim and neat as possible, they decided for an ultra-tiny 24mmx20mm display, and because this must be extremely power efficient, they used an LCD type (to make it more marketing-friendly, they call it ePaper, but it's just that, an LCD) with a fixed mask (no pixel display).

The display can't display alphabetic characters, so for normal people there's no way to check the recipient address of a transaction (which is one of the two absolutely essential things a hardware wallet must always do!).

Look at page 3 of their manual on sending a transaction to see what I mean here. With this type of usability, the product is dead from the start.

https://www.coolbitx.com/explore
click on "4_Send", page 3

Consequently, the settings on the wallet also allow you to disable this check altogether. Then you only have to press a button on the card. And hey, it shows you the amount of the transaction after you pressed that button and thus after the transaction has been sent. No kidding.

2) You gave a nice overview of the project but as some people already noted it's hard to jump in and fund someone claiming he can start producing 10K units of some non-existing device. I would really recommend to create few smaller proposals instead e.g.
- design phase,
- producing PoC devices (10-100 units),
- improving and producing medium size batch (100-1000 units),
- main batch (10000 units)

Yeah, it seems that this is the feedback I got from a couple of people here. And I can totally understand that. To put things clear, this is how the project is proposed anyway. It's clear you need PoC devices, and of course you will do a batch of 100 before you start the machines going crazy. All that we'd have done.

I think the point is that you want smaller poposals to be in a better position to kill this thing if we don't deliver. That's very understandable. And this is what I will do when refining the proposal.

It is a challenge however. For "normal industry business", usually we do a large contract with our customer that already includes the 10k devices. So the contract is very much like the proposal I put up here. The difference is, that in this contract, the customer will have several milestones, and might have the ability to stop the project if milestones are not reached, or even more, get his money back or even get a penalty if we don't perform. This way, the customer has security, but we also have (we know we have the job if we perform well).

In the Dash proposal situation, the only "decision mechanism" we have is the proposal process. This is slow (it may take up to a month to make a decision) and not very interactive. Imagine we do the "design phase" as a proposal. After the design phase, we might have 3D models, tool models, schematics and gerber files. What do we do now? Post all of them on github and let the MNOs vote for the next proposal "producing PoC devices"? What happens if someone here in the forum says "I don't like the corner radius of the upper left hand edge?" Do I change that? Someone suggested to make 1-3 design proposals, how do we vote for that?

I'm only trying to outline the challenge I have here. I'll try my best to solve that we refining the proposal.

3) Design is a bit controversial imo. I'd rather see a taller/wider but slimmer device. Also, I imagine one would use it with one hand if you consider it to be a pocket device for small purchases, and if so, imo vertical layout would make much more sense (again, see CoolWallet as an example).

That's a very valuable suggestion. We will definitely explore a vertical design.

 

[roland]

[...] Because who would physically carry it across a border and risk dealing with these regulations (corruption), when it could just as easily be sent later...?

You are right. Let me stress again: for me, this "border security stuff" is maybe some "extra feature" in the project but by no means a primary design goal. I don't propose a product mainly geared towards people that want to carry large funds through customs without declaring them. This is no mainstream application.

My focus is: if we promote Dash as a way to "be your own bank", then a hardware wallet gives additional security, just like a traditional bank which also has physical security measures and doesn't just store your money on your smartphone.

The Dash Hardware Wallet is neither a way to re-elect Hillary nor to tear down the great firewall. Main purpose is to protect you from "ordinary thieves", including digital thieves (hackers, malware). If it's a good design, it will protect you from very intelligent thieves, and also from the ordinary policy. If the NSA directs their best heads towards you, well, good luck. Hope you don't trust any of these hardware wallets.

I do like the idea of an encrypted bluetooth/NFC comm system though. No wires. But, this means battery.

Yes. Our design idea is to use non-rechargable, ordinary batteries (the design pictured can accomodate AAA cells) and aim for a battery lifetime of 2 years (minimum 1 year). In my view, that's much better than having a device which you have to re-charge every week.

Has the OP considered the realities of making the hardware secure, even if dissected?

Yes, that's my business every day. We mainly design and produce equipment for IoT applications (sensors, actors, gateways) in the industrial and consumer space. We have done designs that range from "simple microcontroller" over "simple microcontroller with secure boot" to designs that are completely verified with TPM chips. But I don't think we need that here, see below.

Web page of our company: https://q-loud.de/ (sorry only in German as of today)

Simply sticking a micro-controller in a box that says "DASH HARDWARE WALLET" on it doesn't do the job...

Well, you exactly describe the Trezor design, don't you? ;-)

It really depends on what kind if threat you're trying to defeat. As already stated, most of our designs (and also the proposed one) would be based on NXP (former Freescale) MKW41Z. This SoC allows for a fully FIPS 180 compliant solution, it has a hardware based TRNG that can be used to seed a FIPS compliant deterministic random number generator (software). It has SoC-level security (basically the job here is to prevent some attacker from reading out the flash and get the private key).

And yes, this chip does not prevent an "electron microscope readout" attack. So good enough to prevent intelligent thieves, ordinary police. If the police asks help from the special FBI group or the NSA targets your personally, forget about it.

 

[roland]

Add the necessary function of multi-crypto support... give it some classy dash branding... and you'd have a product I would buy in an instant.

The reality is, people don't want multiple devices, they just want one product that supports nearly everything.

You hit the nail on the head: People don't want many devices, they want one product. However, in many cases, vendors don't people to use devices that also might support other vendor's stuff.

For me as a designer, I'd fully agree with you: it's only software to add other cryptos, could be done easily.

However: I've been in the industry long enough to have learned: if we're hardware designers / producers, we need to do what our customer wants. Here, our customer is the Dash network, because the Dash network might fund this project.

Some people have stated things like "if it's not Dash exclusive, we won't fund it", or "how can we make sure that this does not just benefit other coins?". And I can very well understand that. Would you put 10k of these hardware wallets as giveaways on the next conferences only to have people use them for Bitcoin?

For sure the end customer of a new BMW i8 electric car wants the possibility to charge at the next Tesla supercharger. Can he?

You see, I'm not taking sides here. But I'd like to find out what the majority of people think about this. Maybe there is an optimal solution ("Dash exclusive for now, others later", or "open source, other will jump in [later, but the nature of open source release]", ...)

 

[roland]

100% support here! What Evan Duffield is planning on doing with creating Node Hardware is to make it completely open source so that anyone can jump in and easily build it themselves and improve upon it and profit off it. It's creates competition and gets rid of the monopoly aspects of it. I would definitely suggest doing that.

hardware wallets were just the start of a portable wallet, I knew it was going to grow into hardware that would allow you to pay a merchant. I must say Dash becoming the first to have hardware specifically designed to store Dash and make payments in Dash would be huge and a total game changer.

Thanks, you made my day. This was exactly the direction I was heading. Taking a step in this direction.

 

[Leonidas]

You see, I'm not taking sides here. But I'd like to find out what the majority of people think about this. Maybe there is an optimal solution ("Dash exclusive for now, others later", or "open source, other will jump in [later, but the nature of open source release]", ...)

Yes, we could go that way.

Obviously, we need to protect ourselves from competition as far as we can. So it could be exclusively Dash at the beginning to help us strengthen our position on the market. However, after that, opening it to other coins could be a positive thing as it would attract some new people that will get to know Dash this way and might switch to it.

As far as the timeline goes, I don't know. Maybe 6 months exlusivity (with the already almost 1 year project, it means that Evolution would have been out for 8 months more or less) ? Maybe community could even strategically decide what coins would be the next one to be added (this thinking based on the only thought that adding those coins will in the end benefit Dash more that if we do not. It's a theory and if it does not make sense, let's just keep the excluvitiy)

 

[GrandMasterDash]

Yes, we could go that way.

Obviously, we need to protect ourselves from competition as far as we can. So it could be exclusively Dash at the beginning to help us strengthen our position on the market. However, after that, opening it to other coins could be a positive thing as it would attract some new people that will get to know Dash this way and might switch to it.

As far as the timeline goes, I don't know. Maybe 6 months exlusivity (with the already almost 1 year project, it means that Evolution would have been out for 8 months more or less) ? Maybe community could even strategically decide what coins would be the next one to be added (this thinking based on the only thought that adding those coins will in the end benefit Dash more that if we do not. It's a theory and if it does not make sense, let's just keep the excluvitiy)

Well, yes, but then again, on day one of public release, I expect ALL sources and hardware to be open and only then could anyone start adding extra cryptos.

But here's the thing.. I see absolutely no reason why it can't be multi-crypto with predominant dash branding, from card design to packaging; "Dash Multicard"

And given the CoolWallet can make it in a credit card form factor... and given there are programmable credit cards (cloning)... and given this is several months away and coinciding with Evolution... I think now, I would only be satisfied with that double combo. It might well be a world first and set the standard for others to match. Yes, I would HAPPILY pay extra for that convenience and I think others would too. If not, and if other MNOs agree, second best would be the credit card form factor or wristband. I'm sorry, but after giving this some thought, I don't think I could accept any other design because the truth is, people really don't like carrying multiple items.

The only thing left is how it would interact with Evolution usernames.. after all, this is meant to make things easier than a trezor, right?

And finally, your job @roland now really is to come up with working demos / prototypes before submitting large value proposals.