Bitcoin Forum

Can a wallet be completely open source and still be centralised? Which one do you think makes more sense? Decentralised and open source or Closed source and centralised? Because I believe if a wallet is closed source then it's centralised, wrong ot right? Drop your opinions.

You have the seed phrase, the keys and the addresses. If no control from anywhere, wallets should not been seen to be centralized. If it is a centralized wallet that has no private key (like Coinbase.com if not yet merged with Coinbase Pro), but the private key belongs to the wallet company, then it is centralized.

Best to use a reputed open source wallet.

It's true closed source is centralized because only the developer and the team are knowing the source, while open source mean anyone can see the code and might participate to improve the development by volunteering. Not all open source are actually genuine, you need to have many expert reviews about the code first.

But in Bitcoin space, centralized and decentralized are mostly refer to private key where centralized you don't have full control over your private key, while decentralized you will have full control.

A wallet doesn't necessarily need to be decentralized to become a good wallet. Wallets like Electrum are fully open-source and is actually reproducible, but yet it's a good wallet despite it being handled by a centralized team(and some contributors of course).

^Take note that probably the only sufficiently decentralized wallet we have right now is Bitcoin Core.

It might be somewhere, but I don't think it makes sense because:
First, if the centralized wallet is set to open source, it will open its own security vulnerabilities to a certain extent. The data displayed on the application is reflected from their servers which can generally be hacked, or even abuse the application system without touching the server at all.
Second, usually they will protect the code from plagiarism especially from competitors. They simply gave a "copyright" reason.

Yes, wallets like coinbase SDK is open source, and it was said to be self-custody wallet but I don't see them being self- custody.
Nevertheless, wallets are either non-custodial or custodial. It's not called centralized like an exchange or crypto project.

The best wallet is the open source non-custodial wallet because every flaw will be reviewed by the public and you're in control of your fund but you can also use a closed source wallet that's non-custodial wallet if you trust the dev team.

That's wrong. There are a lot of closed-source wallets that are non-custodial an example is the Trust wallet. Although the dev team said it is open source but there's no code provided till now.

Open source and closed source have little to do with centralized/decentralized when it comes to making wallet software. It is important to understand that the Bitcoin network and blockchain are decentralized. However, all wallet software is centralized (whether open source or proprietary). Regardless of whether you use the wallet from your personal computer or access it through a web interface or mobile app on a web server, the wallet software is centralized.

Perhaps you meant the terms "custodial" and "non-custodial" wallets? But it has nothing to do with the type of wallet software, because both of them can be either open source or closed source.

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by decentralized/centralized wallet? As mentioned above by decodx, I feel you mean non-custodial/custodial.
If the wallet gives you access to your private keys, it's a non-custodial wallet. Otherwise, it's custodial. Is this what you meant by being centralized and decentralized?


Is bitcoin core centralized?

If we are talking about software, then I think yes. It's currently running on my local PC which is pretty centralized.  ;)
Of course, it is not fully functional in offline mode, but it still works, even if only partially.

Open or closed source doesn't affect how decentralized or centralized the system is. Open/close source is for how the code was save to its repositories. In open source, people or devs can check and see the code, while the other is the opposite.

Being decentralized platform is something how the process is and how safe it is, that's why being open source for a decentralized platform is something necessary.

On the other hand, a "decentralized platform" as a closed source is suspicious and should not be trusted but still subjected since it will depend on what company it is being used.

Yes it can, someone can publish a source code of a custodial online wallet to allow different people run the servers, the architecture would still be centralized. Or a wallet can feature multisig, like Electrum's 2FA wallet does, and if you don't have an option to access your fund without the server's key, you would depend on them and your funds could be frozen.

Maybe a better term instead of "centralized vs. decentralized" would be "self-custodial vs. custodial".
"Self-custodial" would mean that you'll own your private keys, while "custodial" would mean that someone else except you is managing the private keys for you and you are not owning these private keys. Classical "not your keys - not your coins".

The term "centralized vs. decentralized" is better suitable for a comparison between Uniswap (Decentralized exchange) and Coinbase (Centralized exchange).

While open source (code is publicly available) isn't directly related to "self-custodial vs. custodial", there are still wallets where:
1.) you'll own your private keys but the wallet is not open source (Exodus wallet) = self-custodial + closed source
2.) you'll own your private keys and the wallet is open source (Electrum wallet) = self-custodial + open source

While I would go for 2.), point 1.) is still by far better than a centralized exchange, where you don't own your private key.
But 2.) is clearly my choice and all Blockchain experts will agree here.

That's not what centralized means. When you run a full node on your PC you become a "peer", in other words you don't have authority over anybody or anything, you are just an equal to everyone else running a full node.
Being centralized means there is a single central authority making decisions like in case of services such as exchanges where the owner makes all the decisions.

There are two main wallet types:
- Custodial: you don't own private keys.
- Non custodial: you are the only one owns private keys.

About source code, wallets can be categorized as two types:
- Open source: the type is preferred by many users.
- Close source: less preferred.

So the best type is open source + non custodial wallet.

Wallets are not centralized or decentralized. You mean about network, not wallet. Wallet is only either open source or close source.

Custodial vs. Non Custodial Wallets - "Not your keys, not your coin" Explained. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5173370.msg52090702#msg52090702)

Closed source could fuck you more up as one day devs might decide to go south and all funds puff.. gone.

The main thing you should be looking while choosing a wallet is it should be open source and centralised term is incorrect in these cases and mostly used in exchange which are CEX or DEX so you are mixing up different things I can say.

The wallet should be non custodial as they should not hold your keys and funds are in your control until you are careless enough to share your seed with someone you don't trust.The wallets are basically open source and closed source only and the team behind them work on them to improve and keep the security of these wallets.

As far as I can see, it seems there are some members who confuse centralized/decentralized with open-source/closed-source!

As per my understanding (and I hope someone with more knowledge Wil correct me or give more insights about this subject), the terms open-source/closed-source is usually used to describe a software or applications. Example: Electrum is open source while trustwallet afaik is partially closed source.

Centralized/decentralized terms are mostly used for networks architectures.
The peer-to-peer architecture is decentralized where each peer/node has the same privileges and can't impose its rules on other peers on the same network. Example: bitcoin, torrent..
The client/server architecture is centralized where all devices (clients) are connected to a centralized entity (server). Example: web, ftp..