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Blockchain Hackathon 2018 Lightning Network DIY Hardware Wallet

Latest release: ?? ( 28th August 2018 ) 🔍 Last analysed 20th May 2022 . Do-It-Yourself Project Not functioning anymore
30th June 2018

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The Analysis 

Background

The Blockchain Hackathon 2018 was an event held in Lisbon, Portugal. Participants formed teams to build a product related to blockchain. The first prize was 10,000 EUR. The team that won created this device.

From the GitHub repository:

This is a early prototype demonstrating how a LN hardware wallet might be constructed. We hope to continue developing the project into a toolkit to make it easier for anyone to build their own hardware wallet. We would not recommend anyone try to build a wallet or run the UI based on the current code, especially for real funds. Watch this space for updates.

The winning team was comprised of:

  • Stepan Snigirev
  • Gustavo Silva
  • Lairs Henrik Johnstone
  • Justin Moon
  • Stephanie Stroka
  • Akhilesh Arora
  • Michael Folkson
  • Sebastian Kung
  • Jonathan Cross
  • Sebastian van Staa
  • Nelson

Description

Slide Presentation of the Device

The conceptual layers were:

  • ui layer: what’s shown directly to the user on the laptop, as well as the logic talking to lightningd
  • client layer: patched c-lightning, running on linux desktop (possibly mobile later)
  • hardware layer: code running on Arduino devices to provide a reasonably secure wallet

The prototype we pitched and demoed used a Linux / MacOS laptop with bitcoind and our patched lightningd running, as well as a Python web backend to communicate with lightningd, and to serve requests from the React frontend code.

client notes

We have a fork of c-lightning at hkjn/lightning, where we added patches to allow the private key material to stay on the hardware wallet and not be exposed to the client device (Linux laptop). At least that was the ideal, which turned out not to be fully feasible within the roughly two days for the Hackathon..

Analysis

Since the hackathon, the project has not received any additional updates. This renders the device defunct. We do not believe this specific project became commercially available. However, the instructions for building the device are there which makes it a do-it-yourself project.

(dg)

Verdict Explained

This project is not meant for non-technical end users.

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

DIY

Is the product meant to be ready for use "out of the box"?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Do-It-Yourself Project".

Many hardware wallet projects aim to be as transparent as possible by using only off-the-shelf hardware with an open design and open code. If the product reviewed is not available in an assembled form - if the user has to source his own hardware to then maybe solder and compile software to install on the device it falls into this category.

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.