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Velas Wallet

Latest release: 2.3.7 ( 1st November 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 11th March 2022 . Not reproducible from source provided
3.9 ★★★★★
545 ratings
10 thousand
17th November 2020

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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 2022-03-11: Emanuel managed to build the latest version 2.2.7 but not to reproduce the version from Play Store.

Update 2021-11-17: This app is missing build instructions. We have hope to see this be reproducible in the foreseeable future as the provider has ambitions to be listed in FDroid. Watch this issue for progress.

App Description

Velas Wallet is a secure, easy-to-use and completely free application to manage your cryptocurrency. With Velas Wallet you can not only store digital currencies, but also actively use them; pay bills, make purchases, and pay for other services by using a QR code.

With this release, the Velas Wallet now has staking functionalities and token holders can earn rewards for securing and maintaining the Velas Network.

Decentralization and Anonymity Velas Wallet is a fully decentralized application. We don’t store any of your data, nor do we require any verification for basic services. The Velas team has no access to your funds, as your Wallet’s mnemonic phrase is only stored by the user themselves.

Convenience & Easy to use:

  • Multi-language support.
  • Multi-currencies: VLX, BTC, ETH, SYX, USDT & LTC
  • Available for all countries - no geo restrictions.
  • Activity log: view your transaction history.
  • Fingerprint authentication.

The Site

Wallets are available for:

  • Google Play
  • Mac OS
  • Linux
  • Windows
  • Web Wallet

The App

We downloaded the app and assigned a password. The seed phrase is composed of 24 words.

Verdict

This app is self-custodial. We are trying to find out if it is reproducible here.

(dg, em, lw)

Verdict Explained

We could not verify that the provided code matches the binary!

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

Unreproducible!

Is the published binary matching the published source code?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not reproducible from source provided".

Published code doesn’t help much if it is not what the published binary was built from. That is why we try to reproduce the binary. We

  1. obtain the binary from the provider
  2. compile the published source code using the published build instructions into a binary
  3. compare the two binaries
  4. we might spend some time working around issues that are easy to work around

If this fails, we might search if other revisions match or if we can deduct the source of the mismatch but generally consider it on the provider to provide the correct source code and build instructions to reproduce the build, so we usually open a ticket in their code repository.

In any case, the result is a discrepancy between the binary we can create and the binary we can find for download and any discrepancy might leak your backup to the server on purpose or by accident.

As we cannot verify that the source provided is the source the binary was compiled from, this category is only slightly better than closed source but for now we have hope projects come around and fix verifiability issues.

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.