Wallet Logo

Melis Wallet

Latest release: 1.6.21 ( 8th May 2021 ) 🔍 Last analysed 6th May 2022 . Failed to build from source provided! Not updated in a while
0 ★★★★★
0 ratings
7th June 2017

Jump to verdict 

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 

(Analysis from Android review)

Update: The provider replied to our issue so we took another look.

On Google Play we find no claims of this wallet being non-custodial or open source.

On their website they claim

With Melis you have the complete control of your bitcoins and private keys

which probably means non-custodial. And

Melis is open source, published on GitHub.

but the link only leads us to this GitHub account, not to a GitHub repository. But lets search the appId there … which gives us five hits in this repository.

So this is a Cordova app. The build instructions are there … promising so far. Time to get more hands-on …

$ git clone https://github.com/melis-wallet/melis-cm-client
$ cd melis-cm-client/
$ git log
commit 61246945952eb3c50ef8c7800eba84bea1142836 (HEAD -> release, origin/release, origin/HEAD)
Author: lele <lele@melis.io>
Date:   Thu Jan 2 14:33:58 2020 +0100

    - synced to upstrem 1.5.41

commit 287994f4bcfb08f6ca975ccfb1d12f13c664be3c
Author: lele <lele@melis.io>
Date:   Fri Jan 5 16:29:58 2018 +0100

    - v1.1.0

commit 4dff0ed0b3f75579c7b98f983d87601225324c54 (tag: v1.3.9)
Author: lele <lele@melis.io>
Date:   Fri Jan 5 15:35:25 2018 +0100

    - v1.3.9

commit 653ba15a279b9df2e35c7ce85758b11bc04d0afc
Author: Lele <lele@melis.io>
Date:   Thu Jul 27 16:42:11 2017 +0200

    Provided links to the melis website

commit 11b778e6f8f45d1e4c23c580b8cdc3f7e5ca025f (tag: 0.20.30)
Author: lele <lele@melis.io>
Date:   Thu May 11 09:34:24 2017 +0200

    - public release
$ rgrep "1\.5\.40" .
$ rgrep "1\.5\.41" .
./package.json:  "version": "1.5.41",

So this repository has a total of 5 commits with the latest being ahead of what we would like to reproduce (1.5.40) and the prior one being much behind (1.1.0).

Lets see if the build instructions are helpful:

$ docker run --rm -v $PWD:/mnt --workdir /mnt -it beevelop/cordova bash
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# apt update
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# apt install -y phantomjs
phantomjs is already the newest version (2.1.1+dfsg-1).
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# npm install -g npm bower ember-cli yarn
...
+ ember-cli@3.17.0
+ yarn@1.22.4
+ bower@1.8.8
+ npm@6.14.4
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# git --version
git version 2.7.4
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# node --version
v10.16.3
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# wget https://github.com/melis-wallet/melis-cm-client/releases/download/1.5.1/ember-leaf-theme-basic-master-9601b6f57e468dd0ccc4bbcdb01ae1aebfb0153c.zip
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# unzip ember-leaf-theme-basic-master-9601b6f57e468dd0ccc4bbcdb01ae1aebfb0153c.zip
root@8797b57b1bb3:/mnt# mv ember-leaf-theme-basic-master-9601b6f57e468dd0ccc4bbcdb01ae1aebfb0153c ../ember-leaf-theme-basic
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# yarn
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# bower install --allow-root
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# node i18n/generate-melis-i18n.js
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# build/cordova-setup.sh
Usage: config <platform> <target>
root@696ffb01eee2:/mnt# build/build-android.sh
Usage: build <target> <version> <keystorepassword>

So with the provider’s help we get a bit further but we still did not manage to get to a compiled app. For build reproduction we would need an unsigned apk. The keystorepassword therefore should not be needed.

Also the zip file being downloaded from the provider’s GitHub is certainly kind of closed source as is and would require investigation apart from how it is cumbersome to use. It would probably be more convenient to provide that folder as a git submodule.

We are looking forward to finally reproducing a build but for now remain with the verdict: not verifiable.

(lw)

Verdict Explained

We encountered a build error while compiling from source code!

As part of our Methodology, we ask:

Build Error!

Can the product be built from the source provided?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Failed to build from source provided!".

Published code doesn’t help much if the app fails to compile.

We try to compile the published source code using the published build instructions into a binary. If that fails, we might try to work around issues but if we consistently fail to build the app, we give it this verdict and open an issue in the issue tracker of the provider to hopefully verify their app later.

But we also ask:

Stale!

Was the product updated during the last year?

If the answer is "no", we mark it as "Not updated in a while".

Bitcoin wallets are complex products and Bitcoin is a new, advancing technolgy. Projects that don’t get updated in a year are probably not well maintained.

This verdict may not get applied if the provider is active and expresses good reasons for not updating the product.

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.