Liquid EOS in collaboration with Scatter (SSO authenticators) have recently invented the first open source EOS Hardware Wallet, which provides secure storage of blockchain based cryptocurrency. This device could be built from the comfort of your home. They have provided a step-by-step guide on how to build your own affordable Hardware Wallet for around $41 with off- the shelf parts.
The EOS Hardware Wallet is a relatively simple design that features a Raspberry Pi Zero W, an Adafruit 128×64 OLED Bonnet, a Pi Zero enclosure, and a 16GB micro SDHC card for storing EOS cryptocurrency. If you want to embark on building the Hardware, you have to be skillful with the soldering iron or otherwise you could go with a Zero WH that is already outfitted with pre-soldered pins.
Assembly of the hardware is pretty straightforward. Just connect the Bonnet to the Zero using the 20- pin header, then place the electronics inside the enclosure, install the microSD card and you are ready to move onto the software side. Regarding software, the hardware Wallet makes use of Liquid EOS Bancor based blockchain software that uses a protocol to keep tabs on your EOS cryptocurrency. Scatter Desktop is used to keep everything secure, authentication, permission, identities, blockchains, and currency and comes with an SSO that uses asymmetrical encryption.
The advantages of Hardware Wallets includes immunity to computer viruses that can steal money from software wallets. Also, the private key information will never be exposed to the working system and will be kept safe within the Hardware Wallet. Although the EOS Hardware Wallet is open source and Scatter is trusted to keep everything secure, there are several disclaimers to this device.
- Your private key safety is as strong as your Wallet password.
- Importing the seed phrase is not supported yet.
- No Hardware encryption yet.
- We are going to add encryption with a second key- entered in the Scatter Desktop App.
- The transaction details info is currently trusted by the Scatter Desktop App.(This will be fixed in future releases).
- Only key pair is currently supported.
- This is an alpha. Do not use this Wallet for your “owner” keys.
Please wait a while before using it on mainnet until we and the community test it a little more. If you choose to create your own Hardware, visit Liquid EOS medium page for a complete step by step walk through on building an EOS Hardware Wallet, complete with BOM, and software files and firmware.