Passed 4 of 7 tests
We check each wallet from its code to the app on your device, asking these questions in order:
We stopped asking questions after we encountered a failed answer.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "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 were "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 were "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 were "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 same goes for off-ramps that hold no balance at all: bitcoin (or gift cards) go in and fiat goes straight out to your bank. An off-ramp that keeps your fiat until you cash out is a wallet, just not for Bitcoin. One that keeps a bitcoin balance you can’t send out is ‘Can’t send or receive bitcoins’.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "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 were "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.
A product that can send and receive other coins but only tracks Bitcoin addresses read-only is a wallet, just not for Bitcoin, so it gets this verdict. ‘Not a wallet’ is for products that hold no coins at all, such as pure portfolio trackers.
The same goes for off-ramps that credit your bitcoin to a fiat balance you later cash out: the app holds your money, but not as bitcoin.
The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "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 were "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 were "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 were "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.
Balances on operator-dependent layers (Spark, Ark and similar) are judged by one question: “Can a user, with only what the app gives them and expecting help from nobody, actually force their money onto the Bitcoin blockchain?” Such a balance counts as self-custodial only for the part that the app itself shows the user could recover this way, calculated without network access at a fee rate the user chooses, and only once a recovery from that app has been demonstrated, because the app decides how the balance is split and therefore how much of it can come back. The rest of the balance is considered custodial.
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 were "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 were "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.Distribution
Build Verifications
Check your file
Build Verifications
As far as we know, iPhone apps cannot be reproduced. Nobody has managed to build an iPhone app from its source code and get the same binary that the App Store delivers, so there is nothing to verify here.
Update 2026-10-06 Verdict Change
Since version 6.0.0 (February 2026), Cake Wallet includes an optional Lightning balance, added after our earlier review, so this update reviews a new feature rather than reversing an old finding. Users switch it on with “Enable Lightning”, and the app describes a deposit as “swapping your on-chain Bitcoin from this wallet to your Lightning account”. That account runs on Spark through the Breez SDK (breez_sdk_spark_flutter v0.23.0 in Cake 6.4.5). On Spark, payments and withdrawals need the Spark operators to sign alongside the user. In Cake, the only way back from the Lightning balance to the Bitcoin blockchain is a withdrawal that goes through those operators (lightning_wallet.dart). The SDK version Cake uses does offer a unilateral exit that works without the operators, but the app never calls it, never stores the data such an exit needs, and never shows users how much of their balance they could recover on their own.
We apply the same test as for Blitz Wallet and Trustless: can a user, with only what the app gives them and expecting help from nobody, actually force their money onto the Bitcoin blockchain? For Cake’s Lightning balance the answer today is no, and the app does not mark that balance as depending on the operators: its English text never mentions Spark, Breez, operators or custody. Our rules treat a product that presents itself as non-custodial but contains an unmarked custodial account as custodial as a whole, so Cake Wallet is now rated custodial. This update does not concern Cake’s on-chain wallets. We would revisit the verdict if the app lets users exit the Lightning balance without the operators, from exit data stored on the device, and shows how much that exit would recover, or if it clearly marks the Lightning balance in the app as depending on the operators.
Lightning Network support
The lightning Network (LN) is a layer two protocol that promises instant, low fee micro payments. Some wallets do not support receiving transactions which disqualifies them for this feature.
Transactions on LN are
- instant: It usually takes less than five seconds to finish a transaction.
- cheap: Transactions usually cost a tiny percentage (0.1%) of the transferred amount and might also be free.
- micro payments: The unit of account on the LN is micro Satoshis (mSat) or 0.00000000001 BTC.
LN is still in early development and several very feasible attacks are known that can cost users money or disrupt the network.
Why we list it for this wallet
When you deposit to Lightning, you are swapping your on-chain Bitcoin from this wallet to your Lightning account.
Source: App text (res/values/strings_en.arb, v6.4.5)
Android
Legacy verification here
App Description
Cake Wallet is a non-custodial, open-source cryptocurrency wallet available on Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux, supporting assets such as Monero (XMR), Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and several others. It enables users to securely store, send, and receive funds, while offering built-in exchange functionality, invoice payments, and recurring payment templates. The wallet supports advanced privacy and security features including Tor-only connections, custom nodes, Cake 2FA, and external backups. Monero-specific features include subaddress and account support, batch sending, and proxy node configuration; Bitcoin and Litecoin users benefit from coin control and automatic address generation. Ethereum functionality includes ERC-20 token support, contract-based token addition, and optional Etherscan integration.
Free and Open Source (FOSS)
The wallet’s source code is published under a license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) — such as MIT, GPL, Apache, or AGPL — allowing anyone to inspect, modify, and redistribute it. This is a prerequisite for independent security audits and reproducible builds. Licenses that are merely “source available” but not OSI-approved (e.g., those with Commons Clause restrictions, commercial use prohibitions, or other non-free terms) do NOT qualify. Reproducible builds are not sufficient alone.
-
Transparency: Anyone can verify what the code does — including whether it contains backdoors, bugs, or privacy-violating behavior.
-
Community auditing: More reviewers means vulnerabilities are more likely to be found and fixed.
-
Forkability: If the project is abandoned or goes rogue, the community can fork and continue it.
FOSS alone does not guarantee security. The released binary must also be reproducible from the public source to ensure users are actually running the code that was audited.
Why we list it for this wallet
MIT License Copyright (c) 2018-2025 Cake Labs LLC Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software
Source: GitHub README
Trade from and to other crypto currencies
Exchange one crypto currency for another. You “receive Xcoin to your Ycoin account” while in the background the wallet sends your Ycoin address to a service provider which gives it an Xcoin address which it then displays. Funds sent to that Xcoin address - to that service provider - are then sold for Ycoin and the returns are sent to the wallet’s Ycoin address.
Easily accept receiving more coins without actually holding them.
- Sometimes the service is less favorable in its fees when used through a wallet integration than when using the service’s website.
- Some of those services require registration which links your transactions to your ID.
- The exchange provider might not deliver, making it complicated to prove what happened, who to talk to and how to ultimately recover funds.
Why we list it for this wallet
Built-in exchange for dozens of pairs
Source: GitHub README
Buy with Credit Card
Buy coins with your credit card from within the product.
Ease of use.
Buying with Credit Card usually comes with huge fees and the same exchange provider often offers a better rate when not using via a wallet integration.
Why we list it for this wallet
Buy cryptocurrency (BTC/LTC/XMR/ETH) with credit/debit/bank
Source: GitHub README
TOR - The Onion Router
TOR is a tool to shield the IP address of communicating parties. When communicating with a node on the TOR network, the communication is also necessarily end to end encrypted but not when communicating to a server on the internet that does neither use TOR nor ssl (https). Modern Androids allow to put apps behind a local TOR node independently of the provider offering TOR features. While this can be desirable to shield one’s IP address, it also might expose unencrypted data to different, probably more aware third parties. It also does not replace more advanced TOR features in which the wallet creates multiple TOR identities for different requests.
- Privacy: TOR shields the client’s IP address and thus his real world location or identity from servers it talks to.
- Speed: TOR means bouncing messages around a bit more with extra encryption. That makes it slower.
Why we list it for this wallet
Robust privacy settings (eg: Tor-only connections)
Source: GitHub README
Custom Node Connection
The wallet can be configured to connect to a user-specified, independently operated Bitcoin node — such as Bitcoin Core, Electrum Server, or other compatible full node software — instead of the wallet provider’s default servers. The key requirement is that the node is clearly independent from the wallet vendor: a third-party node the user controls or trusts.
-
Privacy: Transaction queries go to your own node rather than a third-party server, so no provider learns your wallet addresses or balances.
-
Security: No risk of a provider lying about your balance or the state of the network.
-
Sovereignty: Full independence from wallet provider infrastructure.
- Requires running and maintaining your own Bitcoin node.
- More complex initial setup compared to using the provider’s default servers.
Why we list it for this wallet
Select your own custom nodes/servers
Source: GitHub README
Transaction Batching
Batching allows to aggregate multiple payments into one Bitcoin transaction.
In Bitcoin, transactions always empty the output of received, prior transactions, so called “unspent transaction outputs” or UTXOs. Without batching, sending to five recipients requires the creation of five transactions with their change outputs - if you don’t have the exact amount you want to send to the recipient, you send “change” to yourself. This change UTXO gets then immediately spent in the next transaction and so on, building a chain of transactions.
- Batching avoids creating intermediate outputs, making the transaction smaller and thus cheaper in terms of mining fees.
- Batching avoids building chains of transactions. If one were to pay more than ten recipients, the network would probably not broadcast the later transactions as only short chains of unconfirmed transactions are being handled by full nodes. Batching fixes that.
Why we list it for this wallet
Specify multiple recipients for batch sending
Source: GitHub README
Advanced UTXO Control
The wallet offers advanced control over which Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) are spent. This goes beyond simple coin selection — it may include the ability to freeze or exclude specific UTXOs (e.g., dusting attacks or tainted coins), label UTXOs, or select inputs manually. The user does not necessarily need full visibility of all UTXOs, but has meaningful control over what gets spent.
-
Privacy: Prevent spending from UTXOs linked to unwanted transaction history, or avoid merging coins from different sources in one transaction.
-
Dust protection: Mark suspicious incoming transactions as “do not spend” to avoid revealing your wallet’s full UTXO set.
-
Fee optimization: Strategically select inputs to manage transaction size and fees.
Why we list it for this wallet
Bitcoin coin control (specify specific outputs to spend)
Source: GitHub README
Multi Signature
Bitcoin allows to define addresses controlled by more than one private key. Two-of-three for example would mean that any two of a list of three private keys would be required to send coins from this address.
With keys from distinct devices or users, an attacker would have to compromise multiple devices or users at once. Multi signature thus allows to protect against one device catching a virus, one wallet having a backdoor (if the multi signature works across different providers’ wallets), one hardware wallet not being trusted (if hardware wallets can be used for multi signature), etc.
- There are no good standards yet for multi signature accounts. This might mean that an account that works with one provider’s wallet won’t load in any other wallet which can complicate recovery should that wallet go out of business.
- Using Multi Signature results in bigger and thus more expensive transactions.
- Using Multi Signature accounts makes it easier for blockchain analysis companies to follow the trail of a wallet.
- Multi Signature accounts require backups of additional descriptors, making financial loss from user error more likely.
Why we list it for this wallet
(no justification provided by LLM)
An issue has been opened at https://github.com/cake-tech/cake_wallet/issues/337
iPhone
Full Taproot Support
Taproot is an improvement of how Bitcoin transactions work and was activated on 2021-11-12. It uses a new address format, defined in BIP 350.
While some wallets will be able to send to but not receive to Taproot, this feature only tracks those that support both.
- Compatibility: Recipients have to choose an address format and due to efficiency improvements, they will tend more and more to expect being paid to a Taproot address. Wallets supporting this are generally more compatible.
-
Cheaper: Taproot allows for smaller transactions, especially for more complex uses of Bitcoin such as multi signature.
-
More private: As public data of a complicated transaction is usually indistinguishable from that of a simple transactions, special uses “hide in a bigger crowd” and become more private.
- More efficient for offline wallets: Hardware wallets ususally have only a very limited knowledge of the funds being spent, with the user confirming amounts sent but only implicitly the fee being paid. When spending from Taproot, the fee becomes knowable to the offline wallet, making protection against fee overpayment easier.
Initially the privacy will be worse, as using Taproot will make transactions stand out from the crowd.
Why we list it for this wallet
Powerful Bitcoin privacy tools like Silent Payments and Payjoin
Source: App Store
Hierarchically Deterministic
All accounts and keys are derived from one masterseed as defined in BIP 32, BIP 39, BIP 44, BIP 49, BIP 84 and BIP 86. While some wallets might use different definitions and not all support SegWit or Taproot, we only consider this feature as given if
- the backup is a BIP 39 mnemonic
- the funds are recoverable on a competitor’s product correctly implementing those standards
- no address reuse
- simple backup
- no vendor lock-in
Note: iPhone products are not verifiable.
Update 2022-11-02: Apparently this product fails to build from source. The relatively old issue was not closed yet. We have to assume this product remains to be not verifiable.
Update 2021-04-14: They now do have a public issue tracker and emanuel tried to build with slightly more success but the verdict remains the same.
Cake Wallet allows you to safely store, send receive and exchange your XMR / Monero and BTC / Bitcoin.
is an implicit claim of this being a non-custodial Bitcoin wallet but:
-You control your own seed and keys
is more explicit about the non-custodial part.
On their website we read:
FEATURES
…
Open source
and indeed, there is a source code repo.
There is no claim about reproducibility or build instructions. As the app uses Flutter and we have no experience with that, we have to stop here. Usually at this point we open issues on the code repository but they have no public issue tracker.
Advanced UTXO Control
The wallet offers advanced control over which Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) are spent. This goes beyond simple coin selection — it may include the ability to freeze or exclude specific UTXOs (e.g., dusting attacks or tainted coins), label UTXOs, or select inputs manually. The user does not necessarily need full visibility of all UTXOs, but has meaningful control over what gets spent.
-
Privacy: Prevent spending from UTXOs linked to unwanted transaction history, or avoid merging coins from different sources in one transaction.
-
Dust protection: Mark suspicious incoming transactions as “do not spend” to avoid revealing your wallet’s full UTXO set.
-
Fee optimization: Strategically select inputs to manage transaction size and fees.
Why we list it for this wallet
Bitcoin coin control (specify specific outputs to spend)
Source: README
Transaction Batching
Batching allows to aggregate multiple payments into one Bitcoin transaction.
In Bitcoin, transactions always empty the output of received, prior transactions, so called “unspent transaction outputs” or UTXOs. Without batching, sending to five recipients requires the creation of five transactions with their change outputs - if you don’t have the exact amount you want to send to the recipient, you send “change” to yourself. This change UTXO gets then immediately spent in the next transaction and so on, building a chain of transactions.
- Batching avoids creating intermediate outputs, making the transaction smaller and thus cheaper in terms of mining fees.
- Batching avoids building chains of transactions. If one were to pay more than ten recipients, the network would probably not broadcast the later transactions as only short chains of unconfirmed transactions are being handled by full nodes. Batching fixes that.
Why we list it for this wallet
Specify multiple recipients for batch sending
Source: README
Custom Node Connection
The wallet can be configured to connect to a user-specified, independently operated Bitcoin node — such as Bitcoin Core, Electrum Server, or other compatible full node software — instead of the wallet provider’s default servers. The key requirement is that the node is clearly independent from the wallet vendor: a third-party node the user controls or trusts.
-
Privacy: Transaction queries go to your own node rather than a third-party server, so no provider learns your wallet addresses or balances.
-
Security: No risk of a provider lying about your balance or the state of the network.
-
Sovereignty: Full independence from wallet provider infrastructure.
- Requires running and maintaining your own Bitcoin node.
- More complex initial setup compared to using the provider’s default servers.
Why we list it for this wallet
Select your own custom nodes/servers
Source: README
Buy with Credit Card
Buy coins with your credit card from within the product.
Ease of use.
Buying with Credit Card usually comes with huge fees and the same exchange provider often offers a better rate when not using via a wallet integration.
Why we list it for this wallet
Buy cryptocurrency (BTC/LTC/XMR/ETH) with credit/debit/bank
Source: README
Trade from and to other crypto currencies
Exchange one crypto currency for another. You “receive Xcoin to your Ycoin account” while in the background the wallet sends your Ycoin address to a service provider which gives it an Xcoin address which it then displays. Funds sent to that Xcoin address - to that service provider - are then sold for Ycoin and the returns are sent to the wallet’s Ycoin address.
Easily accept receiving more coins without actually holding them.
- Sometimes the service is less favorable in its fees when used through a wallet integration than when using the service’s website.
- Some of those services require registration which links your transactions to your ID.
- The exchange provider might not deliver, making it complicated to prove what happened, who to talk to and how to ultimately recover funds.
Why we list it for this wallet
Built-in exchange for dozens of pairs
Source: README
TOR - The Onion Router
TOR is a tool to shield the IP address of communicating parties. When communicating with a node on the TOR network, the communication is also necessarily end to end encrypted but not when communicating to a server on the internet that does neither use TOR nor ssl (https). Modern Androids allow to put apps behind a local TOR node independently of the provider offering TOR features. While this can be desirable to shield one’s IP address, it also might expose unencrypted data to different, probably more aware third parties. It also does not replace more advanced TOR features in which the wallet creates multiple TOR identities for different requests.
- Privacy: TOR shields the client’s IP address and thus his real world location or identity from servers it talks to.
- Speed: TOR means bouncing messages around a bit more with extra encryption. That makes it slower.
Why we list it for this wallet
Native Tor integration for powerful network-level privacy
Source: Store
Unlimited Accounts
The user can create or restore secondary BTC accounts
- Accounting: Multiple accounts allow for easier separation of funds.
- Privacy: Using an account with a positive balance at all time makes it relatively easy for blockchain analysis companies to determine the full history of the wallet. By using multiple accounts, emptying them at times, the user can retain some privacy.
Why we list it for this wallet
Create several wallets
Source: README
Full SegWit Support
SegWit which is short for “Segregated Witness” was an August 2017 upgrade to the Bitcoin protocol which came with new address types.
Full SegWit Support means that the wallet can both send to and receive to all SegWit address types, including bech32 starting with “bc1…”.
- Receiving to SegWit addresses provides fee savings, as sending these funds is possible using less base-block space. In Bitcoin, transaction fees are proportional to the transaction size in bytes.
- Receiving to bech32 addresses provides more fee savings than P2SH Segwit addresses.
- Sending to SegWit addresses is sometimes required in order to use more modern tools that dropped support for legacy addresses, often because of another core property of SegWit transactions: They are not malleable, meaning that the transaction ID cannot be changed “in transit” (on unconfirmed transactions).
Why we list it for this wallet
(no justification provided by LLM)
An issue has been opened at https://github.com/cake-tech/cake_wallet/issues/337
Product page updated by Leo Wandersleb, keraliss, Daniel Andrei R. Garcia
⚠️ Spark (operator-dependent Lightning balance)
A Spark balance depends on its operators. They co-sign every payment and withdrawal and can freeze them. Getting the funds out without them needs exit data saved in advance, a separate on-chain coin for fees, and a wait of about two weeks.
Community Opinions
These comments are contributed by Nostr users.
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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.