Our wallet review process
We examine wallets starting at the code level and continue all the way up to the finished app that lives on your device. Provided below is an outline of each of these steps along with security tips for you and general test results.
Custody
Custodial!
But This product was removed from the platform.
As part of our Methodology, we ask: Is the product self-custodial?
The answer is "no". Therefore we marked it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys".
Read more
Source code
Private
Released
25th August 2020
Application build
As the provider of this product holds the keys, verifiability of the product is not relevant to the security of the funds!
See test resultPassed 5 of 10 tests
We answered the following questions in this order:
We stopped asking questions after we encountered a failed answer.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Few users" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Few users".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Few users" and the following would apply:
We focus on products that have the biggest impact if things go wrong and this one probably doesn’t have many users according to data publicly available.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Fake" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Fake".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Fake" and the following would apply:
The bigger wallets often get imitated by scammers that abuse the reputation of the product by imitating its name, logo or both.
Imitating a competitor is a huge red flag and we urge you to not put any money into this product!
The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Not a wallet" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Not a wallet".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Not a wallet" and the following would apply:
If it’s called “wallet” but is actually only a portfolio tracker, we don’t look any deeper, assuming it is not meant to control funds. What has no funds, can’t lose your coins. It might still leak your financial history!
If you can buy Bitcoins with this app but only into another wallet, it’s not a wallet itself.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin" and the following would apply:
At this point we only look into wallets that at least also support BTC.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Can't send or receive bitcoins" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Can't send or receive bitcoins".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Can't send or receive bitcoins" and the following would apply:
If it is for holding BTC but you can’t actually send or receive them with this product then it doesn’t function like a wallet for BTC but you might still be using it to hold your bitcoins with the intention to convert back to fiat when you “cash out”.
All products in this category are custodial and thus funds are at the mercy of the provider.
The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys" and the following would apply:
A custodial service is a service where the funds are held by a third party like the provider. The custodial service can at any point steal all the funds of all the users at their discretion. Our investigations stop there.
Some services might claim their setup is super secure, that they don’t actually have access to the funds, or that the access is shared between multiple parties. For our evaluation of it being a wallet, these details are irrelevant. They might be a trustworthy Bitcoin bank and they might be a better fit for certain users than being your own bank but our investigation still stops there as we are only interested in wallets.
Products that claim to be non-custodial but feature custodial accounts without very clearly marking those as custodial are also considered “custodial” as a whole to avoid misguiding users that follow our assessment.
This verdict means that the provider might or might not publish source code and maybe it is even possible to reproduce the build from the source code but as it is custodial, the provider already has control over the funds, so it is not a wallet where you would be in exclusive control of your funds.
We have to acknowledge that a huge majority of Bitcoiners are currently using custodial Bitcoin banks. If you do, please:
- Do your own research if the provider is trust-worthy!
- Check if you know at least enough about them so you can sue them when you have to!
- Check if the provider is under a jurisdiction that will allow them to release your funds when you need them?
- Check if the provider is taking security measures proportional to the amount of funds secured? If they have a million users and don’t use cold storage, that hot wallet is a million times more valuable for hackers to attack. A million times more effort will be taken by hackers to infiltrate their security systems.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "No source for current release found" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "No source for current release found".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "No source for current release found" and the following would apply:
A wallet that claims to not give the provider the means to steal the users’ funds might actually be lying. In the spirit of “Don’t trust - verify!” you don’t want to take the provider at his word, but trust that people hunting for fame and bug bounties could actually find flaws and back-doors in the wallet so the provider doesn’t dare to put these in.
Back-doors and flaws are frequently found in closed source products but some remain hidden for years. And even in open source security software there might be catastrophic flaws undiscovered for years.
An evil wallet provider would certainly prefer not to publish the code, as hiding it makes audits orders of magnitude harder.
For your security, you thus want the code to be available for review.
If the wallet provider doesn’t share up to date code, our analysis stops there as the wallet could steal your funds at any time, and there is no protection except the provider’s word.
“Up to date” strictly means that any instance of the product being updated without the source code being updated counts as closed source. This puts the burden on the provider to always first release the source code before releasing the product’s update. This paragraph is a clarification to our rules following a little poll.
We are not concerned about the license as long as it allows us to perform our analysis. For a security audit, it is not necessary that the provider allows others to use their code for a competing wallet. You should still prefer actual open source licenses as a competing wallet won’t use the code without giving it careful scrutiny.
The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Failed to build from source provided!" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Failed to build from source provided!".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Failed to build from source provided!" and the following would apply:
Published code doesn’t help much if the app fails to compile.
We try to compile the published source code using the published build instructions into a binary. If that fails, we might try to work around issues but if we consistently fail to build the app, we give it this verdict and open an issue in the issue tracker of the provider to hopefully verify their app later.
The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Not reproducible from source provided" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Not reproducible from source provided".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Not reproducible from source provided" and the following would apply:
Published code doesn’t help much if it is not what the published binary was built from. That is why we try to reproduce the binary. We
- obtain the binary from the provider
- compile the published source code using the published build instructions into a binary
- compare the two binaries
- we might spend some time working around issues that are easy to work around
If this fails, we might search if other revisions match or if we can deduct the source of the mismatch but generally consider it on the provider to provide the correct source code and build instructions to reproduce the build, so we usually open a ticket in their code repository.
In any case, the result is a discrepancy between the binary we can create and the binary we can find for download and any discrepancy might leak your backup to the server on purpose or by accident.
As we cannot verify that the source provided is the source the binary was compiled from, this category is only slightly better than closed source but for now we have hope projects come around and fix verifiability issues.
The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.Application build test result
App Description from Google Play
In ExonyxTrader you can currency
Buy or sell easily
Possibilities :
- Buy Bitcoin, Atrium, Ripple and Tetra, other cryptocurrencies, fully automatic and deposit at the same time
- Account Charging Perfect Money account or purchasing a fully automatic Perfect Money voucher
- Purchase and sale of PS Voucher electronic currency automatically
- Buying and selling web currency
- Selling to the site and shopping with a wallet balance without the need for authentication
- Ability to add multiple bank accounts to buy and withdraw
- 24-hour support even on holidays as a ticket, phone call, online chat and Telegram support
- Lowest rates and fees
- Ability to make money from subsets
- (0.5% of the total amount paid by the subsidiaries will be automatically transferred to your Polton bag)
Analysis
Registration required an Iranian phone number, so we had to translate portions of the site. We eventually decided on contacting support as the fastest way to get some clues.
Services such as these in Iran are quite common. Users can buy or sell Bitcoin, but only through these intermediaries.
Contact
- آیا این برنامه کیف پول BTC ارائه می دهد؟
- سلام وقت بخیر بله برای هر ارزی کیف پول دارین
- با عرض پوزش ، لطفا کمی صبر کنید ، تا دقایق دیگر پاسخگو خواهیم بود
- آیا کیف پول دارای کلید خصوصی است؟
- خیر جناب
- 7 دقیقه پیش
- متشکرم! روز خوبی داشته باشی. من یک محقق از walletscrutiny.com هستم
- 2 دقیقه پیش
Translated (Screenshot):
- Does this app offer a BTC wallet?
- Hello, good time. Yes, you have wallets for every currency
- Sorry, please wait a moment, we will respond in a few minutes
- Does the wallet have a private key?
- No sir
- 7 minutes ago
- Thank you! have a nice day. I am a researcher from walletscrutiny.com
- 2 minutes ago
We asked if cryptocurrency withdrawals are allowed:
- پس از خرید بیت کوین - آیا می توانم بیت کوین را به کیف پول خود منتقل کنم؟
- 8 دقیقه پیش
- Sorry, please wait a minute, we’ll be responsible in a few minutes
- بله
Translated from Google Translate:
- Yes, after buying bitcoins - can I transfer bitcoins to my wallet?
- 8 minutes ago
- Sorry, please wait a minute, we’ll be responsible in a few minutes
- Yes
Termination Clause
فسخ قرارداد: هر یک از طرفین می تواند با ارسال اخطار کتبی از طریق آدرس پستی به طرف مقابل، قرارداد را فسخ نماید و دراین فاصله طرفین باید تعهدات جاری و تسویه حساب خود را به نحو کامل انجام داده یا برای انجام آن به نحوی که مقتضی می دانند با توافق یکدیگر مهلتی تعیین نمایند. 2) اکس اونیکس میتواند در مدت اعتبار این قرارداد بنا به تشخیص خود یا بروز تخلفات کاربر، قرارداد را خاتمه داده و با اخطار قبلی یا بدون آن دسترسی کاربر به حساب کاربری را مسدود نموده، پنل کاربر را مسدود کرده و یا حساب کاربری کاربر را معلق نماید. در این صورت تمامی حقوق وامتیازات اعطا شده از جانب وب سایت به کاربر متوقف خواهد شد .
Translated using Google Translate:
Termination of the contract: Each party can send a written notice to the other party by mailing the address، Terminate the contract and at the distance of the parties must fulfill their current obligations and settlement in full or to do so in a manner that they deem appropriate Determine. 2 ) X-Onix can be valid for this period at the discretion of the user or the occurrence of user violations، End the contract and block the user’s access to the account with or without prior notice, block the user panel or suspend the user’s account. In this case, all the rights of the loan granted by the website to the user will be stopped
Analysis
With the ability to buy and sell bitcoins, on a wallet provided by the service, we can assume that this is a custodial provider. This is also bolstered by the fact that users can transfer bitcoins to their own wallets.
Tests performed by Daniel Andrei R. Garcia
Do your own research
In addition to reading our analysis, it is important to do your own checks. Before transferring any bitcoin to your wallet, look up reviews for the wallet you want to use. They should be easy to find. If they aren't, that itself is a reason to be extra careful.