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NodaWallet

Latest release: 1.0.20 ( 20th May 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 16th October 2021 . No source for current release found
4.9 ★★★★★
849 ratings
10 thousand
14th September 2020

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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.

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The Analysis 

App Description

From the description:

NodaWallet is a universal cryptocurrency storage application. Protect, manage and exchange your assets! it is an easy-to-use multi-cryptocurrency wallet that can connect and trade through decentralized exchanges (Binance Dex. KyberSwap. MyEtherWallet) where you can easily buy any crypto asset.

NodaWallet claims to be a decentralized app, with the user in charge of the keys.

The Site

Under its Terms of Service:

The private key is connected to the Wallet address and, together, they can be used to authorize the transfer of Virtual Currency to and from that Wallet address. You are solely responsible for maintaining the security of your private key and any mnemonic (backup) phrase associated with your Wallet. You must keep your Wallet address, mnemonic (backup) phrase, and private key access information secure. Failure to do so can lead to the loss of control of Virtual Currency associated with the Wallet. Noda Wallet Cannot Assist With Password Retrieval. Noda Wallet stores your Wallet address but does not receive or store your Wallet password, encrypted private key, unencrypted private key, or mnemonic (backup) phrase associated with your Wallet. We cannot, therefore, assist you with Wallet password retrieval.

The App

We downloaded and installed the app. We also checked the Bitcoin wallet and the recovery phrases were provided after registration. Backups are also possible with 12-word seed phrases.

your private keys are encrypted on your device and never leave it. Only you have access to your funds. NodaWallet is built on top of open source shared libraries. The Noda Wallet server infrastructure ensures that only you can access your electronic money / cryptocurrency.

Verdict

This app is not-custodial. When it comes to the source code, however, although the website has a link to the Github repositories we found that the last commit was on July 22, 2020. On the other hand, the latest Google Play update for Noda Wallet was back in August 23 of this year.

Although the source has been released publicly, it is far from up to date. Meaning that this app does not provide complete and accurate source code.

(dg)

Verdict Explained

Without public source of the reviewed release available, this product cannot be verified!

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

No Source!

Is the source code publicly available?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "No source for current release found".

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.