Display features of hardware wallet native companion app

[jstrnbrg]

It would be great if there was a way in the wallet comparison to show the features of the native companion app of a hardware wallet. In our case (BitBox02) the majority of users uses the BitBoxApp and especially new users will most certainly get started with the vendor provided App.

Therefore we think it makes sense to show these details :)

Validation:

• The BitBoxApp conducts SPV validation.

Privacy:

• The BitBoxApp allows connecting to your own full node via TLS or TOR.
• The BitBoxApp has a CoinControl feature.

Fee:

• The BitBoxApp sets the RBF flag on TX (supported by BitBox02).
• The BitBoxApp has dynamic fee suggestion.
• The BitBoxApp allows setting a custom fee rate in sat/byte.

Looking forward to your feedback on how the wallet comparison pages could be extended to show features provided by the hardware wallet companion app. Thank you

[crwatkins]

Thanks for raising this issue. We have historically reviewed hardware separate from software. As a matter of fact, when I reviewed BitBox02 I commented

Note that as a "hardware wallet," usually only the hardware and firmware components of the device are evaluated. Wallet software that runs externally to the device is usually not evaluated in the review. In the past, this has been done when other (already listed) software wallets can be used in conjunction with the hardware (and in some cases the developer provided software did not meet listing criteria). There is currently no third party software support for BitBox02 so the BitBox App was used in the evaluation, but not scored (the "scoring" was performed ignoring the app, similarly to all other hardware wallets listed). As an aside, I would like to change this in the future and evaluate combinations of hardware and software as a wallet system.

Additional scoring (i.e. validation, privacy, and fees) for companion apps could be added in a number of different ways. We could

1. Simply add the additional scoring to the existing hardware entries
2. List the companion app with other apps based on their supported platforms
3. Create new category of wallet systems (as I suggested above) combining apps and hardware

Here are the issues I see with each approach.

1. By adding the scoring to some wallets and not others I think that would lead to confusion. There are hardware wallets with companion apps that may not meet the listing criteria. There are even hardware wallets without companion apps at all.

2. By listing companion apps alongside standalone wallet apps, there could be confusion by users looking for a standalone software app. There are hardware wallets with companion web apps. We no longer have a category for web apps. I believe many (including myself) would be reluctant to re-create a web category.

3. While this has been a longtime goal of mine, I'm aware it may be becoming less and less practical given the recent interest in hardware multisig (usually custody-focused) wallets. I'm not sure that reviewing a full matrix of hardware wallets, each with different characteristics and reporting on them as a system is reasonable.

Possible remedies (labeled to match the above issues):

1. Perhaps we could collect the validation, privacy, and fees scores in the chart together and title them as for the companion app on the hardware wallet page (this wouldn't apply to every hardware wallet, but could to the ones we currently have listed, even though we try really hard not to paint ourselves into a corner)

2. We could have an obvious caveat to flag the companion apps and that hardware is required to function.

3. A significant consideration is that we will likely soon have multisig wallet submissions that do not have built-in signing engines and rely solely on hardware wallets for signing transactions. Perhaps we should be preparing an interface for that category and companion apps could fit in there (instead of a category for listing of multiple combinations of components).

Any thoughts?

[jstrnbrg]

Hi Craig,

Thanks a lot for your detailed response and excuse me not getting back to you earlier. My notifications weren't set up properly:(

How about the following changes to the HWW pages (using BitBox02 as an example). I think it goes into the direction of proposal no.2 :

• Show if the HWW has a companion App: e.g. Companion app: [BitBoxApp](link to https://shiftcrypto.ch/app/)
• Show which other Apps the HWW works with: e.g. Other supported apps: Electrum, Wasabi, Specter
• Separate the the "hardware + firmware" from the additional points (validation, privacy, and fees) so that there are two lists.
  • The first is about "hardware + firmware" (what you currently score)
  • The second scores the additional points either with a companion app (if existent) or with a recommended app e.g. if no companion app exists, Electrum could be used to calculate these scores.
  • At the top of this second list it should say, which App the HWW was used with in order to calculate these scores.

What do you think of that?

[crwatkins]

By suggesting creating two lists, I believe you are suggesting something more along the lines of 3 (create a new category) while maintaining the existing category of purely hardware wallets (as opposed to my suggestion 2 in which I was suggesting simply adding the companion apps to the current software wallet listings). Is that right? I'm only being pedantic here to make sure I understand what you are suggesting.

[jstrnbrg]

Hi Craig,

I quickly hacked together what I mean. Does that make it clear?

Looking forward to your feedback. Thanks :)

Check out this demo commit: https://github.com/jstrnbrg/bitcoin.org/commit/837da03bdffead01250a839e06404daa7cee5ad6

And here a screenshot:

[crwatkins]

That definitely makes it clear! Thanks much for showing that. How would you propose the browse/selection display/wizard work for hardware wallets that do not have a companion app or wallets that have not been reviewed yet? (There will be a significant amount of work required to review more apps.) What do you think about the issue that some companion apps are web based? Perhaps they are less concerning than pure software web apps? How will the selection wizard work for companion apps that may only run on certain OS or platforms?