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AOFEX

Latest release: 3.0.3 ( 3rd December 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 24th March 2022 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys Not functioning anymore
4.8 ★★★★★
5947 ratings
100 thousand
1st September 2021

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Help spread awareness for build reproducibility

Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with AOFEX  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 2022-03-12: This app is not available anymore.

App Description

We recommend exercising caution with this app. With the top two Google Play reviews calling this app out as fake:

Md Abid Billah
★☆☆☆☆ October 2, 2021
This Wallet is Froud, Fake Before 3days ago I did a Transection of 58.10553-XLM token to my Aofex-wallet from Kucoin-Wallet but i didn’t received my Token on my Aofex wallet. And i did a mail to support team they didn’t replied of my mail. I’m very DEPRESSED 😴😢

Joseph Davis
★☆☆☆☆ October 6, 2021
Fake!!! Look at all the dates of these reviews, they are either bits or paid people to leave fake reviews! Stear clear of these sketchy people, find a real platform to trade. This is all clearly a scam

There is a noticeable number of suspicious 5* reviews.

The app claims to be

a global leading service platform of digital assets with security, has received the MSB license for digital currency trading in the United States. It is based in London, the United Kingdom and has set up its Asia Pacific headquarter in Singapore.

The Site

The official website linked in Google Play does not function, but a link provided in the description does.

User Agreement

In the Terms of Use, 10. Termination of Agreement:

You agree that AOFEX shall have the right to immediately suspend your account (and any accounts beneficially owned by related entities or affiliates), freeze or lock the funds in all such accounts, and suspend your access to AOFEX for any reason including if it suspects any such accounts to be in violation of these Terms, our Privacy Policy, or any applicable laws and regulations.

As they are able to freeze the users’ funds, this means that the exchange stores the funds and is in control of the keys.

Verdict

This app is custodial and therefore not verifiable.

(dg)

Verdict Explained

As the provider of this product holds the keys, verifiability of the product is not relevant to the security of the funds!

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

Custodial!

Is the product self-custodial?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Custodial: The provider holds the keys".

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.

This verdict means that the provider might or might not publish source code and maybe it is even possible to reproduce the build from the source code but as it is custodial, the provider already has control over the funds, so it is not a wallet where you would be in exclusive control of your funds.

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.

But we also ask:

Defunct!

Is the product still supported by the still existing provider?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not functioning anymore".

Discontinued products or worse, products of providers that are not active anymore, are problematic, especially if they were not formerly reproducible and well audited to be self-custodial following open standards. If the provider hasn’t answered inquiries for a year but their server is still running or similar circumstances might get this verdict, too.