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HASHWallet Link

🔍 Last analysed 8th November 2022 . Bad Interface

The design of the device does not allow to verify what is being signed!

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

Bad Interface!

Can the user verify and approve transactions on the device?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Bad Interface".

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 an output device such as a screen, an input device such as touch or physical 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.

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.

Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing build reproducibility with HASHWallet Link  via their Twitter!

Do your own research!

Try out searching for "lost bitcoins", "stole my money" or "scammers" together with the wallet's name, even if you think the wallet is generally trustworthy. For all the bigger wallets you will find accusations. Make sure you understand why they were made and if you are comfortable with the provider's reaction.

If you find something we should include, you can create an issue or edit this analysis yourself and create a merge request for your changes.

The Analysis 

Update 2023-01-30: This product is now available for 450 users. As it has no screen and buttons, it adds little security to whatever software wallet it is being used with.

Updated Review 2022-11-08

Supply chain and manufacturing concerns have led eSignus to divert resources to a different product with different features. The long-drawn out process is detailed in the update section of its indiegogo page.

In their updates section, I found that eSignus has posted an update about a different product   . There’s a mention about the original product described in their indiegogo page 13 paragraphs behind the Hashwallet Link update.

A quote made on the Updates section on August 19, 2022:

The situation of the electronic components has not improved, and our suppliers cannot give us a firm date of availability. We are the first ones who are living with frustration with this situation in manufacturing and are surprised about the current market conditions with all the previous experience we have in the card sector. A clear example has been the difficulties we have had in manufacturing the HW Link since we decided to do so at the beginning of the year until now that we have received them. Crazy times.

Given this situation, we have two options on the table. The first is to continue waiting for components to become available (some with lead times at the beginning of the year of more than 53 weeks) or redesign the board to replace components and use others more readily available. The challenges of the redesign are that it would force us to change the OS and adapt it to the new components, as well as go through the engineering and maturation process of the new design before manufacturing.

It is not the first time a problem beyond our control has jeopardized production. The coronavirus pandemic postponed the manufacture of the first version back in late 2020. However, during that period of industrial hiatus, our team managed to redesign and upgrade the device entirely. HASHWallet now features a larger screen and overall better components, we have fixed and improved battery performance, and created a unique operating language, HOLa, that we truly believe is a game-changer. We have made these important changes and improvements, at a much higher cost, while maintaining the price for our supporters, as HASHWallet will be priced higher in the market, with an estimated retail price of 450 euros.

With the current shortage crisis, we have also been working on a new family of products, aiming to reduce complexity.

We have created a simpler and more agile version of HASHWallet while fully maintaining its safety features. We have created HASHWallet LINK.

There are a lot of concerns especially in the Comments Section of the Indiegogo page.

This page, lists the HashWallet’s launch simply as “2023”.

Previous Review

This wallet is on pre-order and hence has not been released yet.

(ml, dg, lw)