Dear community,
Before getting into all the details about me, my motivation, experience and all the other stuff, let me put the idea first. I strongly believe the Dash ecosystem needs a hardware wallet! Not just support for
any hardware wallet, but the
best hardware wallet ever.
Meet the
Dash Hardware Wallet
View attachment 4743
My name is Roland Hänel, I’m the VP of R&D at Q-loud GmbH in Germany, a company that design, builds and operates “full stack solutions” in the IoT space. My team and myself design and implement embedded hardware, gateway nodes and cloud software stacks. I studied Electrical Engineering and Information Technology and received my M.Eng. degree from the University of Technology in Aachen in 2001. Actually, on the day I defended my thesis I also sold my startup company to QSC AG, Germany’s biggest DSL network operator at that time. I eventually stayed with QSC and helped building the nationwide DSL network, later the all-IP and VoIP networks as the head of the Network Design department. When QSC later decided to move into the Cloud and IoT business, took over responsibility for all development activities in this area.
As an individual, I have followed the blockchain technology area with growing interest over the last year. However, I have to admit that I learned about Dash only a couple of months ago. But what I learned is definitely what sparked my interest, because in my opinion the goals of Dash are exactly the key points of what matters: create an instant, private, secure money that everyone can use. Just as simple as that. Don’t focus on whether your signatures are put in the first, middle or last part of the block. Don’t focus on scripting stuff to help people build thousands of other coins on top of the system. Just put a decentralized, digital cash in the hands of the people!
At the core of any reasonable crypto currency, so with Dash, you hold the money you own, not a bank controls it. This is done through your ownership of your private keys. These we have to guard like the banks guard the money given to them right now. We can argue whether the effort that the banks put into this task is appropriate, but I think we can agree that with crypto currencies right now, just put the private keys on your smartphone is not really the appropriate way if this is more than a couple of Dash.
A hardware wallet is – in theory – the perfect solution for a reasonably secure storage of your private keys. However, the hardware wallets available today are mostly complicated to use or technically inadequate for the task. They are primarily designed for those who hold 100’s or 1000’s of BTC and use a PC to manage their funds occasionally.
What about a hardware wallet suitable for everyday use with your smartphone, tablet and PC? Maybe a device that can even be used at Point-of-Sale installations without any smartphone? This is my pre-proposal outlined in this post, the Dash Hardware Wallet.
What does Dash get with this proposal (“what do you deliver?”)
I propose the development and mass production of a new, specific hardware device: the Dash Hardware Wallet. This device features
- physical size roughly 50mm x 20mm x 100mm, see picture for size comparison with a 2€ coin (nearly the same size as a US Quarter coin)
- rugged, spill-proof (at least), yet nice-looking polycarbonate housing/enclosure
- powered by batteries, 2 * AAA or 3 * AAA (design decision taken later)
- communication interface Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
- reasonably sized, high-resolution TFT or OLED display
- PIN pad to unlock / authorize transactions
Basically, imagine the following use case together with the Dash smartphone app: Just launch the app and watch your funds as usual.
If you just receive funds, no need to even take the hardware wallet out of your pocket. If you send funds, do everything in the app as you’re used to. Then, as a last step, take out the hardware wallet, verify the destination address and amount on the screen. Enter the PIN on the hardware wallet’s keypad, press the Dash button: done.
Bluetooth will enable a much, much better user experience than all solutions based on USB connectivity. It furthermore allows the device to be hermetically sealed and thus more rugged and less susceptible to all types of “electrical attacks”. Bluetooth might even enable further use cases, such as connecting the hardware wallet directly with a Point-of-Sales terminal. Imagine you want to pay your coffee at starbucks, just take out your hardware wallet, the screen shows the merchant’s address and amount, you enter your PIN and that’s it. Sure, the same thing you could already do on your phone today, but this will never be really secure!
Technical details (“what will you do with the funding?”)
I’ll try to get this first post reasonably short, it’s still a pre proposal. However here are some details of action items that I plan for this project.
Development activities:
- hardware design (schematics, PCB, BOM, …)
- prototype creation, testing & verification
- define Bluetooth LE API for relevant crypto function (wallet initialisation, receive, send, …)
- implementation of the Bluetooth LE API for crypto functions on the target (KW41Z)
- generic firmware development, including secure update feature (via Bluetooth LE)
- design of enclosure (3D modeling), verification using 3D prototypes (STL, vacuum casting)
Testing / certification:
- testing for compliance with EU regulations (RED, 2014/53/EU), mark with "CE"
- testing for compliance with US/Canada regulations (FCC, IC), mark with FCC/IC
- safety testing (UL, CSA, Intertek or equivalent certification)
Production setup / tool development:
- injection molding tools (assume 2 tools, S136 steel, high polishing required), test shots
- PCB manufacturing setup costs (tools, stencil etc.) for mass production
- production flash and test tools (bed of nails, programming stations, …)
- first production run (including purchasing/procurement, line setup, worker setup, …)
- setup of independent production quality supervision (SGA or equivalent)
Project management, coordination, accounting
Mass production
- ramp up mass production and produce a first run of 10,000 devices
Budget (“how much money do you need?”)
Current project planning shows a total project budget of
USD $893,000. If we conservatively estimate a Dash value of $230 (roughly a 90 day average), that’s 3578 Dash.
We would apply for a payment of about 360 Dash per month for a period of 10 months (total project duration).
Note that this amount includes the full development and certification efforts
as well as the production of the first 10,000 devices. So, even if you set all development stuff to zero value, we get the individual device at a price of $89.3 per piece, which is pretty decent for the first production run.
There will be more details on budget planning if I decide to go forward with a formal proposal. Feel free to ask any question right away beforehand if you like.
Short term benefits
The first production run will yield 10,000 end devices. Since these have been paid for with the budget, we cannot not sell them for our profit, they belong to the Dash network!
We could for example (just some thoughts)
- use them as giveways at conferences, events etc.
- provide any masternode owner one device for free (hope for a multiplier effect)
- give them all away for a small amount of Dash (e.g., 0.01 Dash) as a promotion, only one per person/shipping address, to get people into using the app / Dash in general
- ...more ideas to come...
If you have any suggestions how to maximize the value of these 10k devices, please let me know.
Long term benefits
We plan to make all development outcomes open source (MIT license preferred were possible and non conflicting, e.g. with GPL stuff). I feel obliged to do this because development is funded by the network and knowledge should not be kept private by us. Anyhow, because this is a security device, making stuff open source also allows for more trust and better verification by third parties (formal of just anyone interested in this stuff).
Note that as with any high-volume hardware development, the benefit is not only the development outcome, but also the ability to run mass production per se. Therefore, we set a project goal of target cost (COGS) for the finished device of $22, which would in turn enable a future retail price (including all retail margins, shipping, duties etc.) of $49. This would place the Dash Hardware Wallet in a very aggressive market position (“best product – best price”).
Some might consider this the biggest impact of this proposal.
Timeline (“when can you deliver?”)
As this is a project that covers the development of new hardware (and firmware), covers testing and formal certification as well as a mass market production ramp up, we estimate an (ambitious) timeline of 10 months for the whole thing.
Risks (“can you really pull that off?”)
Yes I can! Yes we can! My team and I have proven several times that we can develop, test, certify and also mass produce such designs. We have created complex industrial control solutions that only run in batches of 100 pieces as well as consumer electronics devices that run in batches of 100,000 units. We have successfully dealt with European (RED directive) and American regulatory bodies (FCC, IC). We know what to source in far-east and what to source in Europe or the US. Hardware projects always have a very special risk of delay, but I think the timeline is a realistic one. If we get a month’s delay in the end, we have to fight through it, at least it won’t increase costs (so funding interval stays as 10 months fixed).
Of course we depend on others to make this contribution really have a large effect. Integration of the Dash Hardware Wallet into the Dash Wallet App needs to be done by the development team of the App. But I'm pretty sure that if we have a great product, they'll be more than eager to do that.
My last words for today (it’s close to midnight here)
I hope I included enough details to at least convince you that I have spent more than a few brief thoughts on this idea. On the other hand I hope that I didn’t steal your time by just including too much stuff.
There’s certainly more to discuss, more to share.
This is why I take the opportunity to present you this project as a pre proposal.
I’m looking forward to your comments, get an idea if you like the idea or not, what to improve etc., and then make the right proposal for the final stage. Or to forget the idea altogether?
Yours,
Roland
