Keystone Wallet Review – Is This Hardware Wallet Safe?
Felix Küster
The Keystone Wallet has emerged as a frontrunner in the hardware wallet sector.
This Keystone Wallet review aims to provide an in-depth look at the Keystone hardware wallet, including its features, security measures, and overall performance.
As we delve into the world of hardware wallets, we’ll explore why many consider Keystone to be among the best hardware wallets available today.
| 📌 | Summary |
|---|---|
| 🔒 Keystone Wallet | Keystone wallet is a hardware wallet that provides high security against online threats due to its air-gapped nature. It was founded by Lixin Liu, a software developer, and was previously known as Cobo Vault. |
| 📦 Keystone Products | The Keystone suite includes three products: Keystone Pro, Keystone Essential, and Keystone Ultimate. All three products are waterproof, impact-resistant, equipped with fingerprint sensors, completely air-gapped, have a self-destruct mechanism, and employ transaction signing and password verification. |
| 🛠️ Key Features | The Keystone wallet comes as a 4-inch color touchscreen device with no USB port and no WIFI or BlueTooth connections. It only communicates with the outside world using QR codes. It has a fingerprint sensor, a self-destruct mechanism, and rechargeable batteries. It can also be integrated with DeFi wallets. |
| 🛡️ Security Features | Keystone wallet has several security features including MicroSD card firmware upgrading, Fingerprint Authentication, Self-destruct Mechanism, Web Authentication, Dice Entropy, Multi-sig Support, PSBT Support, and Shamir Backup. |
| 💰 Pricing | Keystone Essential: $119, Keystone Pro: $169, Keystone Ultimate: $479, Keystone Tablet: $39, Keystone Tablet Plus: $49, Keystone Tablet Punch: $24. |
| 🔄 Supported Coins | Keystone wallet supports Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in two different firmware: BTC-only Firmware and Multi-coin Firmware. It also provides DeFi Access. |
| 📈 Comparison to Other Wallets | Many hardware wallets still offer points of entry for hackers, even though they are air-gapped. The Keystone wallet excels in this area as it only communicates through QR codes. It also has a large screen as opposed to many other wallets with small screens. |
| 🤔 Closing Thoughts | The Keystone wallet is one of the best crypto hardware wallets in existence today due to its high level of security. It is worth its price and is recommended for anyone looking for a secure hardware wallet. |
What you'll learn 👉
INTRODUCTION
Keystone wallet is a security marvel that joins an elite group of hardware wallets with no connection to the online world.
Being completely air-gapped, it provides very high security against hackers, malware, and viruses so it’s one of the most popular wallets in the hardware wallet industry.
Lixin Liu, a software developer, founded the Keystone wallet. It was previously known as Cobo Vault under the umbrella of Cobo, a company devoted to crypto technologies.
However, Lixin and his core team of developers left Cobo to develop the Keystone Wallet on June 1, 2021. The reason given was that Cobo decided to prioritize Cobo wallet(hot wallet) over the Cobo vault(the cold wallet option)
KEYSTONE PRODUCTS
New update: Keystone now offers 2 types of products: Keystone 3 Pro and Keystone Bundle Pack. The first one is priced at $126.65 and the second one at $222.9.
SECURITY FEATURES OF THE KEYSTONE WALLET
MicroSD card firmware upgrading
This ensures that you do not need to connect the wallet to the internet to upgrade it. All you need to do is insert the SD card into your computer, download the firmware upgrade on it and insert it into your Keystone device to complete the upgrade process
Fingerprint Authentication
This biometric feature adds an extra layer of security to your device.
Self-destruct Mechanism
It comes very handy when someone else has gained physical access to your device and is trying to use brute force to gain entry
Web Authentication
This feature helps you confirm that your product has not been tampered with during supply. It is done on the Keystone website, utilizing QR codes to verify if you have the real deal
Dice Entropy
With this feature, you have control over which recovery phrase you’ll choose for your account. By rolling a dice several times, you can generate your own recovery phrase that no one can guess.
Multi-sig Support
A preferred choice for institutional investors, transactions are only sent when a specific number of people sign them on their various devices.
PSBT Support
This means the wallet is compatible with other wallets, in case you trust those more. It’s compatible with wallets like Casa, Bluewallet, Specter, Electrum, etc.,
Shamir Backup
In simple terms, this feature allows users to split their backup recovery seed into fragments and choose how many of those fragments are necessary for backup purposes.
For example, if you split your seed phrase into six fragments and decide that only 4 of those fragments are needed, you are still covered even if you lose one or two of those fragments.
HOW TO SET UP YOUR KEYSTONE WALLET
Before setting up your device, you need to confirm if it has not been tampered with. To do that, go to keyst.one/authentication on your computer and follow the process.
After that is done, follow the steps below:
- Choose a password. Make sure it’s strong enough to prevent guessing by intruders
- Select ‘create wallet’ and then ‘next.’
- Your recovery seeds will come up. Write it down somewhere safe. It’s best to use a metal plate for this purpose
- Confirm your recovery phrase
- You have created your wallet!
To connect your keystone wallet with the mobile application, open the app and tap ‘Bind.’ It brings up a QR scanner which you can use to scan the QR code on the Keystone device.
SUPPORTED COINS
Keystone wallet supports Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in two different firmware:
BTC-only Firmware
The company saw a need to provide firmware for only Bitcoin to protect against isolation bypasses where a Bitcoin fork, like Litecoin, Dogecoin, etc., is used to hack your Bitcoin assets.
This firmware also accepts all types of Bitcoin deposits as opposed to the multi-coin firmware, which only takes native segwit transactions.
Multi-coin Firmware
As you can guess from the name, this firmware supports other coins apart from Bitcoin. The supported coins number into thousands and include ETH, TRX, DOT, etc.
You can upgrade your Keystone wallet from Multi-coin to BTC- only but can’t change it back once you do that.
DeFi Access
This comes on the back of the Keystone wallet’s ability to connect to other wallets. With these, you can access decentralized applications and DEXes for staking, lending, borrowing, saving, swapping, and performing other DeFi functions.
PRICING
These are the prices at the time of writing:
Keystone Essential: $119
Keystone Pro: $169
Keystone Ultimate: $479
Keystone Tablet: $39
Keystone Tablet Plus: $49
Keystone Tablet Punch: $24
OTHER KEYSTONE PRODUCTS
Keystone Tablet
This is the backup of the backup solution offered by Keystone. It’s a way to keep your recovery phrase secure against fire, mold, rust, and other disasters. It goes for $39
Keystone Tablet Plus
It’s an improvement on the Keystone tablet with a difference of 10 dollars. It offers a slot for each tile instead of every four tiles(as present in the Keystone Tablet). Also, it has 13 screws on each side to further hold the slots in place, as opposed to 3 screws on the Keystone tablet.
Keystone Tablet Punch
It’s the stylus explicitly made for writing your seed phrases on the Keystone Tablet and Tablet plus. It goes for $24.
HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO OTHER HARDWARE WALLETS
Many hardware wallets still offer points of entry for hackers, even though they are air-gapped. For example, some might have Bluetooth connectivity or USB connection which provides attack vectors for hackers to build on. The Keystone wallet excels in this area as it only communicates through QR codes.
Also, it has a large screen as opposed to many other wallets with small screens that make it challenging to confirm transactions easily.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
It’s not an exaggeration to say that this is one of the best crypto hardware wallets in existence today. With the level of security it offers, we can say it is worth its price. We hope this article has helped you decide if it is for you or not.
Read also:
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- Ledger Nano X review
- KeepKey wallet review
- CoolWallet S review
- Archos Safe T Mini review
- Best crypto hardware wallets for DeFi
- Opolo Wallet Review
- SafePal S1 Review – Supported Coins, Price, Firmware Overview
- Ellipal Titan Review: Is This the Most Secure Hardware Wallet on the Market?
- Ngrave Wallet Review
- Novi Wallet Review
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