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Hello,
Can making a wallet make you rich? How Trust Wallet make money for their programmers? Please look at the Fully Diluted Market Cap: https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/trust-wallet-token/ (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/trust-wallet-token/)

Any idea welcomed.

Thank you.

That is Trustwallet token, it was a token given as an airdrop to Binance users like a year or two years ago. The token increased significantly in price during bull market in the past, that is another profit for the developers, I mean Binance CEO, CZ.

It will most probably not make you rich, unless you make a malicious wallet that steals people money, but it can earn nice bucks.

Some things that come into my mind is:
- put ads on the wallet, especially on smartphones
- strike deals with other companies, like for selling/buying crypto directly from inside the wallet
- sell user and chain analysis data (especially, since one can buy/sell crypto, you may need to ask for KYC)

Also sometimes, but rather seldom, wallets or programmers get into financing programs from the richer companies (sometimes this also asks for some specific features though).


However, if you start all this from the idea to get rich, your mindset may not be OK and I expect you'll do, sooner or later, something fishy (like selling user data) just for the sake of money, ruining your and your wallet's reputation completely and throwing to the bin a great amount of work.

Besides putting advertisement either on their website or the GUI itself, as far as I know, most of the wallet developers which are open source or FOSS earn a few bucks by people's(their user) donation.

But maybe you really can't expect to earn a decent amount from there unless you do not care about other people's privacy.

The main source of income for these wallets is probably the built-in exchanges they have where they earn a commission for every trade.

What you should really be focusing on (if you're planning to build a wallet) is how you're going to attract the users. Since there are many wallets to choose from (which have been around for quite some time) your product has to be better in every aspect (more features, better UI/UX, supports multiple platforms, etc.).

I think the main ways money is made from software development (chronologically) has been'
1. Donations
2. Adverts
3. Token airdrops (like uni and the one you mentioned op - these definitely benefit developers).
4. Fees (like electrum's 2fa or metamask's swap fees)

They are making most of there money from there tokens allocated to the team. Trust wallet tokens valuation depends on the demand of there wallet since they are charging fees in TWT tokens to those tokens that want to  list tokens on the wallet database. A certain token can only display logo on the trustwallet balance if the team will pay a fee to list there token so that token holders will not need to add manually the token contract in able to see the tokens in there wallet.

What if go the other way? Offer a crypto wallet to the community for a one-time payment or a subscription model. In this case, the creator will not need to collect user data for subsequent sale, and users will be spared from "spying" on their data. I think it's a win-win situation. Personally, I have not heard of such wallets for which you would have to pay, as for the purchase of any software. In this case, developers will need to have an impeccable reputation so that users can fully trust them, especially for their money.

In the majority of cases, the answer to that it's going to be a big fat "NO", but if your wallet becomes a well-known brand in the community, then perhaps you can earn a decent amount by charging consultation fees ^{[e.g. Electrum does it]}.
^{- Refer to "this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1738501.msg17392386#msg17392386)" for more information.}

Since there are already free wallets in use, I don't think that there will be users willing to pay for such a subscription.
So unless the wallet has some very good and useful features nobody else has implemented (situation that probably cannot last long), why would someone pay for a product he can get for free?

You are absolutely right. If we can use wallet for free then why use wallet with money. We already use many free wallets such as: trust wallet, metamask etc. I don't need any more wallets in my opinion

even though it has good features, people still think about subscribing, because many wallet applications are provided free of charge with many features so that for a wallet application that is subscribed it will be difficult to get users.
Wallet makers will only sell hardware wallets that can be synchronized with the wallet application they made, so that they are wallet producers who benefit mainly from selling the hardware wallet. Free for mobile applications, but must purchase a hardware wallet to enjoy more complete features and better security.

For some wallets that implement KYC this is a bit crucial, because KYC will collect all user data and can be sold to third parties as a profit for the wallet maker.

I think it's make sense and that's the part of advertisement too, just like if you're want to take advantages of ledger live, you need to bought a ledger first. But honestly the features aren't that interesting than other wallets, mostly people are looking for the trustworthy and popularity of the company to make sure the hardware wallet they bought are very secure.

Which wallets do implement KYC? Freewallet isn't even a wallet, but an exchange and yeah it's a scam exchange that would collect your KYC. There's no way and no reason we need to use a wallet that collect our KYC

Possibly, if you have something fresh and good to offer crypto users, this might sound easy but trust me it's not, also if you want to embark on this journey make sure your wallet is open source and do not rush token launch, make sure there are many people using the wallet first.

Previously, Trust wallet did not launch their own token.

You can get income from users if you have a good crypto wallets. Launching a token is another source of income for your wallet company. You can create wallet, build products first and when it succeeds, you can launch your token. Another way is using crowd funding and launch a token at the same time of first version of your wallet.

Getting rich will depend on success of your wallet. Don't think it is similar to build a phishing wallet, steal seeds or users and their funds. You won't get rich this way. Rich in money but poor in morality.

As long as there are free and better alternatives, it's unlikely that you will get any profit from creating your own wallet app. Just take a look at Electrum, it's probably one of the most trusted and used bitcoin wallets and it's completely free. They don't even accept donations.

The wallet you are going to create has to have some new features you don't see on other wallets to attract users first. Then you can follow any of the suggestions above to monetize it (displaying ads, paid features, having its own token...)

Of course, trust and popularity are number one, but we must also pay attention to the development of the wallet and the update of the security level that is up to date.

For wallets that implement KYC, try checking the EIDOO wallet, the wallet uses KYC to create an Eidoo ID and will be able to access hybrid Dex Exchange in it and participate in several ICO projects. it's a mobile wallet app and it also uses the Card to access the "eidoocard" wallet.
For more details, you can check on their website official https://eidoo.io/

Most wallets earn from commission through additional from the fee that they're asking to their users. It's aside from the network or transaction fee, they're adding a bit from there.

Also, if a wallet has an integrated exchange, they're earning more from there the same with what I've said about the fees and commissions.

Let's say that wallet owners or developers are earning but they're also making sure that their wallet is tight in security and they invest there as well.

I have a feeling you have no idea what you're talking about. Unless it's a custodian service (which is not really a proper wallet, since it's not your keys it's working with), a wallet doesn't charge extra fees. So all the fees are miner fees and the wallet developer earns nothing off it.
Custodian services do ask you to overpay for the fee and many make money off that, but, as I said, those are not really wallets (although I know that many tend to use even exchanges as wallet services).

Only by making a wallet willnot make anyone rich. You should have plans about how to make money. Like if you offer swapping feature in your wallet will make you rich. You can show ads also in your wallet. Trust wallet has many features for earning money.

Hello,
Thank you so much for all replies.

How about the transaction fee? Any wallet with the zero transaction fee?

Transaction fees are about incentivizing miners to include your transaction in the next block, therefore it wouldn't make much sense to have a wallet that supported "zero transaction fees".

Although it's not a consensus rule, there is a policy rule of 1 sat/vB minimum relay fee configured into most nodes. Miners can bypass this minimum (only consensus rules confine them, not policy rules) but if you broadcast a transaction to the network without fees then most nodes will just ignore it.

If it gets popular then yes, projects will pay you in their token to get listed.

Yeah, thanks.

I've forgot to say and add that it's mostly on the custodial wallets. I've used a handful of them in the past years and had a comparison to the current network fee and to those wallets that I've used before and there's really sort of an additional to the base fee.

Although the market wasn't really that bad at all during those times and those fees weren't that much. Eventually, I've stopped using them and sticked to the non-custodial ones.

Then sorry if I was too harsh; as I said the "equation" is much different in case of custodian services. Also those usually get together with other services offered, squeezing some more cents here and there (like maybe getting tx fee for transferring funds between addresses of the same platform, but nothing actually done on-chain, hence all the fee money kept).

Just nowadays we advise everybody move off custodial platforms. Now the trend seems to be to oppose as much as possible the KYC and also be aware that "not your keys, not your coins", which all mean going away from custodial wallets.

There are very few niches available imho for a new custodian wallet. Maybe LN. It will not be easy for OP to start such a platform. He may even need backing from a financial institution and then he may become employee, which is far from the "getting rich" idea.

No problem, it was my bad I haven't reviewed what I've said before that post.

The sad thing that I've noticed is that, there are still plenty of users with those custodial wallets and they're trusting it more than the non-custodial. I think the ratio compared to us that knew the differences of those isn't that big.

But still, we'll never know what can happen to those funds if something goes wrong with those wallets or services that these people are trusting. Especially these days, it seems becoming common to see exchanges halting withdrawals and it's possible to happen with these custodial wallets.

Maybe my use of the word "trend" is an overstatement. Still, from a couple of years ago when basically everybody (ok, don't take it ad-literam) had their coins at exchanges and other custodian wallets, the things are changing. Of course, some are lazy, careless or incapable to take care of their money (after all, it does require a bit of skill) and they still have their coins in others' hands.
But the charts about the funds leaving exchanges or the charts on how many hardware wallets are being bought do show a direction I like. We cannot expect wonders overnight, but the direction is good.


True, there are plenty of topics on this matter here on bitcointalk. And if not all the people from the forum read/care/comply, then what could we expect from the outsiders?!

As far as I know, back in the day, some early blocks were able to broadcast zero fee transactions^[1], but those people could perhaps known to be miners and are not an average bitcoin joe. Plus, opting for zero tx fee would just harm miners in general.

You can just use Electrum for you to be able to have more control over your transaction fees though, or you could perhaps wait until the mempool^[2] gets cleared before sending bitcoin.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267378.0
[2] https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#BTC,24h,weight

Note: Wallet (non-custodial) doesn't charge the transaction fee, you are paying the network fee.

There are plenty of wallets which will let you sign and broadcast transactions with zero transaction fee, with or without below relay fee! error. @PowerGlove has beautifully explained above what relay fee means. But when you are making wallet, the main stress should be on usability. A good fee suggestion algorithm and low/high fee warnings according to it are the desirable features from the wallet. If that system is in place then the wallet can let the users select any fee (even zero if they want).