Bitcoin Forum

Hi everyone, good day, I am just curious and I have a question in my mind today, nothing comes for free as we all know it, developers create crypto projects to solve the issues available in the crypto world today and also make money out of it but what about wallet devs? Few new wallets are showing up without having their tokens out of the box, my question is how are they making money? From gas fee? Or something else? No one works for free so I am thinking there must be a way they are making money.

If they are transparent enough they will show their wallet and their share based on project. But some devs are being paid maybe in fiat or major coins for their work. Its same like normal job who got paid when they perform their work.

There are different cases. As some devs are working on their own project with such tokens share and got their vesting.

1. Some wallets are just here to contribute to the industry, and probably for the devs to have some development experience for their portfolios. (e.g. Electrum)
2. Some non-Bitcoin wallets have a built in swap feature where they route to DEXs, and they add a small fee on top of that. (e.g. MetaMask)
3. Some probably collect data.

Agreed, and on top of this, i guess there are also:

• Dev's that hope to get some donations
• Dev's that might get some sponsoring from private company's (i can imagine a hardware wallet vendors paying SPV wallet dev's to add support or extra features?)
• Multibit used to charge people a small fee per tx
• (mostly) online wallets can use their gui to display advertisements

Not that i have proof (or examples) of each of these points, but i guess some of them are viable forms of income or motivation for wallet developers

It depends on the transaction in the contract that is agreed with both parties still if this is crypto it's transparent its publicly seen as long as you have the transaction ID or the transaction address of course if this is a large amount of coins some of them converted into the fiat currency and makes a direct to their banks to make sure immediately transferred. Of course companies wont use Exchange as their wallet they will use like the Electrum, metamask or any hardware wallets.

I expect most online or closed-source wallet collect decent amount of user personal data.


Some Bitcoin Core developer show their Bitcoin address on their GitHub profile or social media page. I'd rather not provide specific example though.


Already happens few times[1-2]. Bitcoin Core even open for sponsorship[3].


AFAIK Blockchain.com already doing that for long time. Mycelium also show ads on their Android wallet[4]

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[1] https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/who-are-bitcoin-cores-developers (https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/who-are-bitcoin-cores-developers)
[2] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/gemini-sponsors-bitcoin-core-maintainer-fanquake (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/gemini-sponsors-bitcoin-core-maintainer-fanquake)
[3] https://bitcoin-rpc.github.io/en/about/sponsorship/programme/ (https://bitcoin-rpc.github.io/en/about/sponsorship/programme/)
[4] https://github.com/mycelium-com/wallet-android/blob/master/mbw/src/main/java/com/mycelium/wallet/lt/api/GetAds.java (https://github.com/mycelium-com/wallet-android/blob/master/mbw/src/main/java/com/mycelium/wallet/lt/api/GetAds.java)

It is always going to be about sales. Whether they have created a wallet that deserves a price tag, then that's how they are probably going to make money. If you are talking about creating wallets for a specific token, it's perhaps for promoting the actual coin. How will the users hold it if they aren't going to use any software for storing it? I think it's always going to be aligned with "why" they are using or creating the tokens in the first place. Being invested in would be a worthy goal for the devs.

Do you know that a well established companies can decide to have their own crypto wallet built for the masses? For example Google might decide to build its own crypto wallet with new features, all they have to do is hire experienced developers and pay them when the job is done, the money will start coming in when the wallet gets a token.

I could imagine electrum's developers getting some funds from trusted coin too (even if it looks like a bit of a usability experiment in itself).

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Some devs probably want a way into the industry and think a wallet is a good way to start too. There's probably a decent amount of influence that can be passed from a dev that's participating in making wallets too (eg eclair's team with the lighting network).

Most open source developers do this, you can see their github repos with this donation address or something like a buy me a coffee in the last part.

If i remember correctly, these are the developers of btcpayserver and the one that square gets

Coinbase. While they have their exchange(that has a custodial wallet option), they also have a separate non-custodial wallet called Coinbase Wallet[1]. Pretty much a MetaMask competitor that I assume they made just to be able to spread the Coinbase brand name.

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[1] https://www.coinbase.com/wallet

I'm interested in point 3 of your answer. Are there known cases of this? Which crypto wallet companies or devs have been caught collecting data?

If we are talking about the monetization of wallets, then collecting data for this is not enough. It means that they earn on the sale of this data. Here I have one more question: are there cases when ads were published for data sale of various crypto wallet users?

This is the same as the video I found about facebook being free to use and they ask how will mark make the facebook survive then mark just said we run ads. That would be the case for other wallets to have ads on their app to earn while people can use their wallet app for storing coins. I would also agree with mk4's answer about how the they earn money.

You'll notice in some of the wallets that has swaps, there's the commission that they'll get and when you see that the fee they ask is higher than what the network is requiring.

With that little increase, that's how they make from it but all that has been said are all correct too. Some really don't have any means of making a commission through the wallet alone.

But in today's time, they won't spend time developing for nothing and be known to it, although a few noble devs really like to contribute.

I don't know of any cases, although that doesn't mean they don't, and to be honest I would be surprised if they didn't. Since, a lot of companies out there unrelated to Bitcoin have been caught collecting data, and selling it. Even when it hasn't been publicly declared, if you go, and sign up to a bunch of companies with throwaway emails or using the +nameofsite@emailprovider.com method, you'll soon find out that the companies claiming not to sell your data are, because you'll suddenly over the next few weeks get a bunch of spam from random companies.

Although, there's probably not a lot that you can do, since the above method isn't exact proof, and wouldn't stand up in a court of law. So, while there might not be any cases to go on, that doesn't mean you should automatically trust them.

Only give your data to people, and companies you trust, and ideally you'll be able to count on two hands the amount of companies/people you trust. I can without a doubt in my mind say that altcoin wallets absolutely have been collecting data that you wasn't aware of, since there's a large amount of crap out there, which is quite openly a scam, so why wouldn't they abuse their user base via their wallet software too.

As for the main Bitcoin wallets, well most of them are open source, so you can verify it yourself. Basically, any closed sourced wallet software you shouldn't be using, and collecting your data would be the least of your concerns in that case.

in today case like happen with token not coin usually dev wallet remain untouched till the unlock date is completed even after completed they still need a vesting for amount period of time ~ Lock from 1-5 Year and linear vesting for 1-3 Year
the purpose of this to ensure that dev wont run away from project even tho there is lot rugged project and abandoned  ;D

most cases developer using InitialCoinOffering(ICO) money to continue development of their coin and for exchange listing fee airdrop and bounty they using marketing wallet that usually remain unlock with coordination with community

Not all crypto projects are created to solve real issues in our society. Most of them are created by following a trend in crypto market. They are clone projects that are created from source code of leading projects in each trend.

Developers can earn money from premined coins that can be publicly presented in White Paper, on website, etc. or be hidden for shady intention. They can earn money from allocated tokens so it is why you have to check tokenomics carefully. Pay attention on vesting period of developer tokens and check top holder wallets to make sure there are less risk of token on the market in early weeks or months.

Developers can also earn money from selling their tokens in ICO, IDO, IEO, whatever derivative of such for a common purpose of fund-raising.

In some cases depending on how the company does it and how invasive the data hogging is, collecting data may be enough. Take note that for some businesses data is literally their mane revenue source; and take note that we're talking about finance and investing here — data can be really really valuable.

I once asked same question to Coinomi mod, they replied, there is fee for new coin integrations plus when you use their wallet's inbuilt swap features they get commission.

Most new wallets don't get much when they start but once you are established in market, making money becomes possible.

Don't mixed clone projects with the ones that really introduce something new to the public, there are thousands of shitcoins out there with a copycat whitepaper and copied utilities, not all developers are real developers, most are just into money rush, short term business and close down.

Not just really valuable, but probably one of the things most companies are looking for these days. Most of it is for advertising purposes, and the more up to date information they have on people, the better marketing strategies they have, which will directly correlate with how successful their business is. So, I would argue that data is probably the most valuable thing a company can have, not just valuable.

I hate to admit it, but collecting data from a company stand point is probably vital to their success. Although, I'm definitely not saying I like the fact we've gone down this road, and personally I'd like to see less privacy invasive data collection, but honestly I think we're past that point.

Profit is not always related to the money obtained directly, but indirectly, good reputation, fame, adding work to your CV, helping others are all things that bring you money indirectly, and therefore all open-source, self-hosted wallets are based on such a philosophy.

A large part of the free wallets collects data and sells it to companies, governments, tracking sites, etc. This assumption includes all free self-hosted services including block explorers, tracking sites, multi-currency wallets.

Many developers are people who have previously invested in this project, and therefore its success means profits for them.

I wouldn't go as far to say that "all" open source software is following that philosophy.

Not always, but at least there are some people out there that want to contribute to what they consider a worthy project. I mean, if we take Satoshi no matter his background he didn't exploit Bitcoin to better his career or status. They just made something they thought the world needed. So, we do know that there are people out there that aren't always looking to benefit from it directly.

Sadly, capitalism does encourage what you've said, and therefore the majority are doing it to better themselves in one way or another.

There are different types of wallets are there so they are making money in different ways which probably varies with one from another. Lets take coinbase wallet which is custodial so they charge fee from you which is always higher than the actual fee needed and also they batch the transactions means they save lot of funds and only spend less from what they have collected.

Next multi crypto wallet as others said they may charge gee before the integration of a new coin and also they take commission while swapping one from another.

Unfortunate truth indeed. I thought otherwise in the past, until when I started running websites/businesses. Anyone that tried running a website or online service would immediately realize how tremendously important data is.

I learnt a lot reading peoples comment in this section of mine, thank you all for all the contributions but there are some wallets that have insanely high fee more than the others and they are always centralised wallets like Coinbase for examples and yet people are still using this wallet.

Adding to this

4. Some wallets get their revenue from the number of downloads on Playstore/Appstore
5. Some wallets have advertisements and gain ad revenue from them

How is your last point valid? Can you use a crypto wallet that shows ads when you launch and try to make some transactions?

It's like showing some banners or connecting it to google adsense (if it's a website). I don't know if google adsense is available for those desktop wallets where they can be placed at the top of the interface of that wallet.
But most likely, it's like having those advertisements that has come from their inquiry. I can't really remember if I've used and saw one that has it on its own platform.

Yeah you are right. There are some wallets which do provide advertising especially on mobile apps.
For instance the open source wallet Mycelium has this kind of advertising. Obviously this generates revenue to the developers.

https://i.ibb.co/MsjMPLx/61031957.png