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Exnovin - اکس نوین | بازار معا

Latest release: 2.7.0 ( 20th September 2022 ) 🔍 Last analysed 15th September 2021 . Custodial: The provider holds the keys
4.2 ★★★★★
930 ratings
100 thousand
12th December 2020

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Please help us spread the word discussing the risks of centralized custodians with Exnovin - اکس نوین | بازار معا  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 

There are two apps with the same name of   . Both appear to be created by the same developer Team App E. Both are Iranian. However, both have different website domains. This specific app links to exnovin.io.

This is an exchange, with terms and conditions.

This contract is based on Article 10 of the Civil Code, and subject to all laws and regulations of the Islamic Republic of Iran in general and the Electronic Commerce Law approved in 2003 and the relevant regulations and the Computer Crimes Law in particular,

Depositing BTC is made available once email verification is completed. Like most centralized exchanges there are various kinds of user tiers that depend on the amount of verification the user complies with. This can include:

  • Mobile number verification
  • Bank account verification
  • National card verification
  • Confirmation of fixed number and address

We chatted with their on site support to verify. This is their reply:

جهت تضمین معاملات انجام شده، کلید خصوصی کیف پول ها در اختیار صرافی هست
To guarantee the transactions, the private key of the wallets is in the possession of the exchange

This is a custodial app, therefore it is 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.
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.