
Jade
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.
Released
1st January 2021
Custody
Private keys generated and held by user
As part of our Methodology, we ask: Is the provider ignorant of the keys?
The answer is "yes". Private keys are generated by the user on the wallet.
Read more
Application build
If you have a binary for a version that doesn't appear on the list, you can drop the file here to register it so somebody can verify its reproducibility:
Passed all 10 tests
We answered the following questions in this order:
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 "Announced but never delivered" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Announced but never delivered".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Announced but never delivered" and the following would apply:
Some products are promoted with great fund raising, marketing and ICOs, to disappear from one day to the other a week later or they are one-man side projects that get refined for months or even years to still never materialize in an actual product. Regardless, those are projects we consider “vaporware”.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Un-Released" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Un-Released".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Un-Released" and the following would apply:
We focus on products that have the biggest impact if things go wrong and while pre-sales sometimes reach many thousands to buy into promises that never materialize, the damage is limited and there would be little definite to be said about an unreleased product anyway.
If you find a product in this category that was released meanwhile, please contact us to do a proper review!
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 "Provided private keys" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Provided private keys".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Provided private keys" and the following would apply:
The best hardware wallet cannot guarantee that the provider deleted the keys if the private keys were put onto the device by them in the first place.
There is no way of knowing if the provider took a copy in the process. If they did, all funds controlled by those devices are potentially also under the control of the provider and could be moved out of the client’s control at any time at the provider’s discretion.
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 "Leaks Keys" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Leaks Keys".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Leaks Keys" and the following would apply:
Some people claim their paper wallet is a hardware wallet. Others use RFID chips with the private keys on them. A very crucial drawback of those systems is that in order to send a transaction, the private key has to be brought onto a different system that doesn’t necessarily share all the desired aspects of a hardware wallet.
Paper wallets need to be printed, exposing the keys to the PC and the printer even before sending funds to it.
Simple RFID based devices can’t sign transactions - they share the keys with whoever asked to use them for whatever they please.
There are even products that are perfectly capable of working in an air-gapped fashion but they still expose the keys to connected devices.
This verdict is reserved for key leakage under normal operation and does not apply to devices where a hack is known to be possible with special hardware.
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 "Bad Interface" and the following would apply:
The answer is "no". We marked it as "Bad Interface".
We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer was "no", we would mark it as "Bad Interface" and the following would apply:
These are devices that might generate secure private key material, outside the reach of the provider but that do not have the means to let the user verify transactions on the device itself. This verdict includes screen-less smart cards or USB-dongles.
The wallet lacks either a screen or buttons or both. In consequence, crucial elements of approving transactions is being delegated to other hardware such as a general purpose PC or phone which defeats the purpose of a hardware wallet. For big exit scams, a companion app could always request two signatures - one for the coffee you are paying and a second to empty your wallet completely. The former could be broadcast while the latter only gets collected for later use.
Another consquence of a missing screen is that the user is faced with the dilemma of either not making a backup or having to pass the backup through an insecure device for display or storage.
The software of the device might be perfect but this device cannot be recommended due to this fundamental flaw.
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 "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.Application build test result
We modified the build script due to this issue. A temporary workaround is to add a line in the script that would remove the ‘–recursive’ flag to prevent the cloning of the problematic QEMU submodule.
`$ ./scripts/test/hardware/blockstreamjade.sh 1.0.34`
...
Results:
40f7b83466ae356a7a118e2b422bfec144bb91f0313d1f0456747d0dafecf6a8 jade_1.0.34_10_ble.bin
c88b3d38deddec7265878885b4f1ff952d5ac56d202861a9ce9a6e2b84006280 jade_1.0.34_10_ble.built.bin
c88b3d38deddec7265878885b4f1ff952d5ac56d202861a9ce9a6e2b84006280 jade_1.0.34_10_ble_stripped.bin
550cf11c1b87d050790238589852c0900cf63091a43c03ba5445c7549340d694 jade_1.0.34_10_ble.bin.gz
The Jade firmware version 1.0.34 10_ble is reproducible with above hashes.
ef04943a338cc43cc6fe13fa3c8d8884af9d2e638377b55ff0ccb0ae6145c39b jade_1.0.34_10_noR.bin
83098f274244f1b676a2f161da155e6c3444f0a30450fd758a26046a88654ce2 jade_1.0.34_10_noR.built.bin
83098f274244f1b676a2f161da155e6c3444f0a30450fd758a26046a88654ce2 jade_1.0.34_10_noR_stripped.bin
34e48638e8c09c4d69f1ab1cf6f5b54a935a256fec01958e8ae5cdd28a8b0c74 jade_1.0.34_10_noR.bin.gz
The Jade firmware version 1.0.34 10_noR is reproducible with above hashes.
045238a9f0631bd14fc877938fca9d2b8c600a1042c6bcf2ce78468aaffdaaad jade_1.0.34_11_ble.bin
e056250e6f75cda5b14a91cc8aef6edcf6a9875cdae2f41ea9b96bd88fdd0e46 jade_1.0.34_11_ble.built.bin
e056250e6f75cda5b14a91cc8aef6edcf6a9875cdae2f41ea9b96bd88fdd0e46 jade_1.0.34_11_ble_stripped.bin
018fa89c8d294725ccad9470b18e5a10464d6092063e4673163e5703df933476 jade_1.0.34_11_ble.bin.gz
The Jade firmware version 1.0.34 11_ble is reproducible with above hashes.
6be404cddceb89ecf134548ca9ca8a5ae113a9ba55f3ad5e7365b5346ef240a2 jade_1.0.34_11_noR.bin
e38355055873ed9ab10c19cb425a64497589c78c7dad041ec351599e2c2c1b52 jade_1.0.34_11_noR.built.bin
e38355055873ed9ab10c19cb425a64497589c78c7dad041ec351599e2c2c1b52 jade_1.0.34_11_noR_stripped.bin
b3e0e7d88ee60950c4be253a05bbd229a6758cba1cdc03a9ad8bc94731259159 jade_1.0.34_11_noR.bin.gz
The Jade firmware version 1.0.34 11_noR is reproducible with above hashes.
Firmware version 1.0.34 of Jade is reproducible
Tests performed by Matthew Lamb, Leo Wandersleb, Daniel Andrei R. Garcia, keraliss
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.