Bitcoin Forum

Hello to all, i present myself i have 23 years old and enthusiat blockchain, i'am student in system embadded

And i want to make a project of building an hardware wallet (something like Ledger )

Where should i start ? i do not have any idea i saw some video on youtube from people who opened a ledger and saw all circuit there, i think there are 3 important circuit which are microprocess and basics circuit.

What are all steps that i have to do for that please? Thank you for all !

(btw i want to build an evm hardware wallet)

There are a bunch of DIY hardware wallets; you could have found them if you browsed the Hardware Wallets (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=261.0) section or used forum search (https://ninjastic.space/search?board=261) in that section.

$8 LNbits DIY Hardware Wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5413707)
SeedSigner DIY Signing Device (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5367858)
Krux DIY Hardware Wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5350905)
DIY Bowser Hardware Wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5291333)
PiTrezor DIY Hardware Wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5355225)
Specter DIY hardware wallet (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5348779)

If you wanted, you could also build a Trezor from scratch or modify their hardware to your desire to create something new, as it's all open-source.
Hardware: https://github.com/trezor/trezor-hardware
Firmware: https://github.com/trezor/trezor-firmware

Foundation Devices are the only other manufacturer who offers open-source hardware for their Passport Founders Edition (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5382675) and Passport Batch 2 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5421713), as well.
Founders Edition: https://github.com/Foundation-Devices/passport-electronics/
Batch 2: https://github.com/Foundation-Devices/passport2-hardware/

Thank you so much for all information ! I'm going to start researching this. Wish me good luck for that !

This forum is a treasure trove of information on anything Bitcoin... ;) Good luck buddy!

Please don't make it like ledger  :P
There are much better hardware wallets available today, and I would even say that market is oversaturated with hardware wallets.

If I understand correctly you want to start making commercial hardware wallet device that you want to offer for selling to other people?
In my opinion this is pure waste of time if you are single guy who is starting from zero without any background experience in making products.
You would have to compete with some big players, so this is battle already lost.
It's ok if you are making hobby DIY project, and in that case try to make everything open source and transparent.

More blockchains, means more bugs, more work, and in near future most of shitcoin blockchains won't even exist, or nobody will use them.

Oops; I missed that. EVM as in Ethereum Virtual Machine (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum#Virtual_machine)? So he's trying to make an Ethereum hardware wallet. Then the topic would belong in the Altcoin section. 'Development & Technical Discussion' would be wrong either way; as we have a dedicated Hardware Wallet section inside of this board.

I would advise @ToujoursAuTopLeKhey to move their topic to the best suited board to get the best answers.

You are right, but if OP should have innovative concepts like attaching his wallet app to XMTP (Extensive Message Transport Protocol), I don't know if Hardware wallets are eligible. It's a new program with fewer applications and users. Now, OP can start by creating a wallet with other features for people to interact via sending and receiving messages through the XMTP server. It works fine with EVM, Smart contract wallets. His wallet users will not only transact funds, they, too, can send messages. XMTP has a simple procedure, The wallet user only needs to request a signature from XMTP that signifies he/she is from a specific blockchain app attached to XMTP, for instance, OPs wallet.

Though, like I said; they're new, we are to expect some loopholes on the web3 based project, and their problem is that the encrypted keys generated for users are stored on-chain. So if a malicious App, which I hope OPs wallet is not, gets attached to XMTP, they can access their users keys on the XMTP servers by providing the exact signature to XMTP, which will grant them access. Their programming team, currently, is working on such a problem, and a password-hashing app like Argon2id can solve this dispute for them.   Therefore OP can achieve such a goal if he's working on a commercial wallet business, he has got metamask, coinbase wallet, Rainbow wallet as competitors, yet the competition is not much compared to the general wallet market.


https://xmtp.org/docs/dev-concepts/signatures

https://github.com/xmtp/xmtp/discussions/16

The thing is that the linked DYI wallets don't have secure element chip. Ledger does. I think that this makes implementing "something like Ledger" could be a significantly more difficult task.
However, Passport also uses secure element. So my take is you can try to learn from all of those and make your own.

I am not that knowledgeable on the internals of HW, but maybe even Satochip DYI card and the related Git can be of help: https://satochip.io/product/satochip-diy-and-developer-card/ (although it worth mentioning that the advanced users tend to avoid the HWs that don't have their own screen)

Hello dkbit98,

Thank you so much for your answer.

So i just want to make it for myself to understand how really that's work and also i want to make a good Portefolio adding that  project. I'm actually student and i think it's the most good time to know and try project !

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oh really sorry i didn't know that's not the right place where to ask about EVM wallet, how could i move my topic in altcoin developpement ?

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]