Hi guys, sorry for being inactive for so long but I've had some of the worst 2 weeks of my life. I found out my dog has terminal cancer which made him slowly lose his ability to walk or basically do anything, so I had to take care of him and carry him outside so he could actually go to the bathroom. He was a heavy dog, around 110 pounds. Unfortunately, he has already died. He was 12 and we did try all possible treatments but it was just too advanced. He had had surgery a couple months back to remove a tumour and thought he was fine but unfortunately he wasn't. I buried him on Monday and today was pretty much the first day I felt capable of coming and replying here.

So first of all, since this has been a discussion for a long time on this thread, the US company is out, it's actually been out for the past 2 weeks since the 6th of June, I just didn't have the energy or mindspace to come and post here. I'm honestly not sure how to link it here but the company is called Ringwallet Inc; registered as a C-Corp, in Delaware, with file number 3858518. I think you can search for it on the department of state website of delaware. So Vod, the company is out, it's actually been out for 2 weeks since I said it would, the filings should prove this as well, I honestly just didn't have the energy for this. So I would appreciate if you can remove the trustpilot rating as you said you would.

Moving beyond that


For now the ring has no recognisable elements anywhere on the ring, theres's a simple pictogram logo on the inside of it with the initials "rw" and that's it. In the future we may consider offering customisations but for now at least that's not viable because it would be a manufacturing nightmare.


Thanks


They could, but they would need some sort of UI to interact with the ring. Assuming the company goes out of business and the app isn't in google store anymore then you'd need to download your own apk so you can have the UI and interact with it.


On that note, the rest of the team has had time to talk in the past 2 weeks and for now the consensus seems to be that we'll be publishing everything (the apps, the ring firmware etc) as open-source (not source-available). The exact time hasn't been decided but it will be sometime before delivery of the first batch of products.


Yeah so regarding the first thing, about the 25$ wallet, it is our wish to have a very cheap affordable wallet, but please be aware that this is probably at least 6+ months away as first we want to launch the ring and make sure everything works well before moving on to other things.

There is no battery in the ring, the battery life of 10 years on the website is moreso due to legal requirements, in the sense that we need to include a minimum life expectancy of the product if used in normal conditions (i.e. not setting it on fire, diving with it at 200m etc) so that's what 10 years means, the minimum lifespan of the product. In theory, the chip itself is graded for a minimum lifespan of 20 years and can last even longer than that but we wanted to be on the safe side.

Regarding software bugs, obviously we did our best to make sure there's no software bugs, but even if they are there should be maybe UI bugs or things like that, not bugs that can make you lose your funds. Of course it's a new product but as I said above, at the end of the day, we figured that if we publish everything open-source then 1. people can just check the code themselves and if they find anything wrong message us and 2. will hopefully help in building some reputation


So anyway guys, that's pretty much it for the above. In terms of other updates, we've had a physical event in Cluj sometime last week; I didn't attend because was taking care of my dog in his last days but Christian our CMO did attend. We are continuing our fundraising round and I am hopeful it will be done in <60 days from now and moving forward we will slowly start sending out free rings to influencers and etc. We are now waiting on a batch of rings to come and have reached the final design for the boxes and waiting for them as well. Other than that, we should be publishing the apps in the app stores in the coming weeks as well, waiting for final approvals for developer accounts.

Anyway, I'll try to keep all of you updated but now that I've posted this I'm probably going to take a few more days for myself until I come back and answer more questions just to get in a better state of mind after the entire thing because he's been my dog for 12 years and in all honesty I still kind of feel like shit. Hope the above answers all the questions. Cheers.

Hey, first of all thanks for the kind words. Let me answer what you wrote:

1. Regarding currency, that's based on location, so if you're in US it's $ and if you're in Europe it's Euros. The price includes shipping and VAT as well so hence why it's a bit higher since of that price, depending on exact VAT (as it differs from country to country) of the 84 eur you get left with 66-71 eur and then you have to subtract shipping which is included as well which is ±8 eur on average for EU countries so about 58-63eur of which we then subtract product cost. Most providers show you a price and then on checkout they add VAT and shipping on top but we didn't really want to do that which is why we included it in price.
2. In general, I am aware that it is not the cheapest solution on the market. To be honest, since we're still a startup we don't have the same capacity of manufacturing as many pieces in a single batch and so we have a higher cost of product / item. Over time, as we grow and are able to manufacture larger and larger batches my hope is to be able to eventually reduce the price.

Now regarding the app disappearing from the app store because the company goes out of business, that's honestly a legitimate concern and it's one of the reasons why we're considering publishing everything open-source (including the apps), in which case even if the company goes out of business people would just be able to for example run their own apk and recover their wallets and move them somewhere else. Even if we end up deciding to publish it as source-available, you would still be able to do that since the company would have gone out of business in your example. With that said, we are gravitating more towards open-source at this moment either way and we're going to take a final decision in the coming weeks and announce it here.

Regarding the price range of the wallet you're looking for, I'm not sure if something like that exists at this moment. In the future we do have in plan of creating a more affordable option as well but in all honesty I don't think we could ever reach a $10 price range. If you include shipping then that's like 50-80% of the price, even if we disregard VAT and etc but even if you don't include shipping and VAT, I'm not sure if you can realistically manufacture a secure hardware wallet at that price. There may be a chance to do something in the $25-30 range if you go with something like a card since it's a simpler form factor but not sure if $10 is achievable in the very near future. Maybe years ahead as technology improves and production costs go down.

My apologies, I misunderstood. I'm happy that was helpful. After our discussion I also asked for some more feedback and opinions from advisors and team members and we're currently debating internally whether to just publish everything as open-source or source available. We honestly haven't taken a final decision yet but we should make one soon and I will update here.

I will update when the US entity is out. We will also doxx the team in the coming weeks.

With that said, we are not selling anything so not sure how we can scam someone. People can only sign up with an email.

Regardless, I won't go over this again as it's already been discussed. I'll just get back when I have more updates.

I removed three things from the PMs, one: the link to my linkedin, two: the list of what I did before which is also on my linkedin and three: the name of a project I built. I won't talk about the others but I'm pretty sure the linkedin link which has my name counts as personal info. What do you mean I claim I was doxxed in my home country?

Regarding the Kickstarter, 10% is the kickstarter fee and the other 5% you are probably refering to is the fee that marketing agencies that do kickstarter campaign take, which I also mentioned in my dms.

My question was what specifically where you refering to when you said


I was asking what exactly you were referring to when you said I wrote different things in our dms than I did here, so I assumed you were talking about my comments regarding VC funding since that was what we were talking about and what you quoted. So I quoted those messages and asked. You said the answer is no so then what is the inconsistency?


1. I directly quoted from our dms the parts that were related to what we were discussing, which was VC funds.
2. I didn't imply you were doxxing me, you said you want to post our dms and I said sure as long as you remove the doxxing info. And then I just posted our entire dm convo without the doxxing info.

Edit: I see you just added this as a trust to my profile: "This user has not provided any PII. By claiming I know who he is, he hopes to gain trust. We do not know who this user is. His claims of being doxxed in his home country are unproven."

1. I don't hope to gain trust by claiming you know who I am.
2. What do you mean claim of being doxxed in my home country?
3. The Linkedin literally has my full name.

Here, I'll make it easier for you by posting all dms without doxxing info.

First dm:



Second dm:



Third dm:



Extra dms I sent, no answer




So there you go, I literally copy-pasted our entire PMs without actual doxxing links and/or details/names of projects that can dox.

It's the same as I said above. We're raising a round from VCs. I considered running a kickstarter but decided it's a bad idea for the above reasons.

Lastly, just so we're clear
1. I will dox myself along with the entire team but much rather prefer that I do it myself, at most it will be a maximum of 2 weeks before I do. I know in the dms it says it should've been done by now. It's not because we had more things to do besides this. We will doxx soon either way.
2. The US entity should be out by the end of the coming week and I will share it.

With that said, I genuinely don't understand why you're so against us. Even when I try to answer to your questions you either ignore me or find some new way to attack me.

I doxxed myself to you and while I will dox publicly as well, would prefer to do that personally.

If you want to post any of the dms without the doxxing info feel free to. But I already quoted the dms that related to the above discussion myself.

Also why do you ignore my question?

edit: or the doxxing of other people I mentioned. I want to be able to do that myself when we announce various things, not through you posting our dms.

Is this what you're referring to?


That still stands. We're not opening any sort of contribution/sale/etc. We're raising VC funds, as I stated in our dms as well.

If you're refering to the fact that I said we're in production phase, it's the same as in our dms, when I said that we're already waiting on a batch that we can send over to people for review.

Or maybe you're refering to this?


But it's the same thing as above. We're raising from VCs as I said in our dms as well. We're not launching a sale.

If you're referring to the comment about giving some legitimacy to the project; both are true. I'm sure having some VCs who back us and did due diligence will probably put some worries at rest.

Hey Vod, the US company should be out next week and I will share it.

As for the other things you mentioned; it's not in design phase, we're currently in production phase. As for funding; yes we are looking to raise VC funds but I don't see anything wrong with that. First of all, with the exception of Trezor most hardware wallet go and raise funding rounds because to be able to run a hardware business you need to be able to manufacture large amounts or price becomes very prohibitive on a per item cost; and making even 20,000 devices is more than $1M so that's the main reason. Beyond that we want to be able to get some proper licenses since the end goal is to allow people to use the ring at a POS which is dependent on that. Second of all, we're not raising money from random people on the internet but from professional investment funds that do due diligence so again I don't really see anything wrong with that.

Anyway, I will share the US company details when it's done.

1. I did some more reading on licenses after our discussion.
2. You gave them as examples, and you seemed to care a lot about open-source so I was curious to see what these guys were doing. When I noticed some of them aren't really that, I figured you'd like to know, genuinely have no idea why you're trying to misconstrue what I said.
3. Common clause license isn't different to what I was saying at all, I even used the specific term in one of my posts. You can go and read my previous posts; I specifically people would be able to see/copy the code for whatever non-commercial purpose they want, the only restriction was not using it commercially for a period of 2 years. Whereas common clause restricts you from using it commercially in a perpetual manner. So not sure why you're against it when I said it but for it when you say it. (By definiton, common clause license is a source-available license and not an open-source license).

Hito has been in presale for 2 years so being open-source is just a claim at this point. But regardless, I'm not even sure why you got so upset about me checking the list. I was genuinely trying to help and you somehow took it as a personal attack.

Thanks for the answer. I'll answer in parts.

Re Uniswap; I used it as an example so you could understand what I meant. I also don't know who they're supported by and whatnot to be honest.
Re Open source:
1. I genuinely didn't know the difference between open-source and source-available at the time. That's my mistake and I apologise for it.
2. As mentioned in my previous message, you, as well as some other people we are talking to privately have expressed opinions in regards to why go open source vs source-available so we haven't made a final decision as of right now. At the very minimum, the code will be made source-available and we are still debating whether it will be under a trully open source license or a commons clause one. I will update here after we make a final decision.

Re Satoshi & Bitcoin; I don't have such delusions of grandeur. I think ringwallet is a cool nifty product but it will never be even 0.1% of bitcoin, so not sure it's a fair comparison. With that said, I do understand where you're coming from, and just to be clear, the difference between the license we initially planed to use and a commons license is that ours was/is time-limited; meaning anyone would've been able to use the code for whatever commercial purposes they wanted to after a period of 2 years, as opposed to commons clause, which as far as I understand, is permanent.

So back to your theoretical example, if Satoshi published bitcoin under a 2-year limited license, people would've just forked bitcoin 2 years later, so not really the end of the world to be honest. Because again, we didn't want to gatekeep the code forever but rather just have a 2-year headstart. Anyway. I am genuinely considering just publishing it completely as open-source when the time of launch comes, but the launch is still a few months away and until then we are still wrapping up what is left and will be making a final decision in regards to this as well.

Lastly, regarding your list; that's an awesome list and thanks for sharing. I actually went through the list myself, and since you seem to care a lot about open-source, which I appreciate, I just want to make some mentions to you regarding the list. Just to be clear, not trying to be a dickhead, but I genuinely went through the repos, so I figured some of the things I will list below should be of interest to you.

https://github.com/proto-at-block/bitkey -> commons clause license. It's combined with MIT, but it's the same as it being source-available because it also has commons clause license.
https://github.com/Cypherock -> commons clause license. Again, combined with MIT but same as above, it's source-avaialble in reality not open-source.
https://github.com/hito-xyz -> they say open source but as you can see the github is completely empty bar from some documentation; the software you're supposed to download is completely closed-source, not even source-available. Also, apparently they've been in pre-sale mode for about 2 years now and as far as I've been able to see, not much if anything has been shipped out. There's even a thread (and apparently a telegram group) of people complaining about it. Here's the thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5487572.0
https://github.com/bithd -> literal complete copy-paste fork of trezor, not sure if it's worth including in such a list, because a lot of the people on that list have actually done real heavy work and should be praised for it. This is just ctrl+c / ctrl+v.
https://github.com/digitalbitbox -> completely empty github so not even source-available
https://github.com/bitlox -> most of it is forked from bitpay, hive and multibit. The repos which are not forked have no discernible license of any kind and have not been updated in 7-8 years at a minimum, so again, not sure it qualifies as open-source or that it deserves to be on that list.

I think that's a really cool list and just wanted to let you know about these because I figured you just didn't have the time to actually check and that's why you haven't removed them yet. Some of those guys on that list have really done an incredible amount of work and I figured they shouldn't be bundled with things like the above. Anyway, thanks for the feedback and the information, I'll give this some proper thought and we will in either case announce our decision here once it's made.

1.First of all, again, the only restriction is literally taking the code and using it as-is to launch a for-profit company the next day. Furthermore, it will be time-limited, so something like 2 years from each release. Literally the same as Uniswap v3 did. And to answer the question of why, sure.

I want the code to be public so people can check it themselves and people don't have to trust in us directly.
At the same time, I genuinely don't want someone to just copy-paste the entire codebase on the 2nd day after launch and then do their own. Me and the team have spent more than a year working on this just to date and we haven't even launched, yeah I want some protection from competitors. I don't find anything wrong with that. You want to copy it for-profit? Sure, you can do that too, 2 years after the release. And I genuinely find nothing wrong with that, because besides direct for-profit uses everything else will be permitted and even for-profit use will be permitted after 2 years so where's the issue with that?


2. It will be very similar to Uniswap v3 licensing https://support.uniswap.org/hc/en-us/articles/14569783029645-Uniswap-v3-Licensing / https://github.com/Uniswap/v3-core/blob/main/LICENSE

Is uni v3 not open source just because all the people copying their code for-profit had to wait until April 1st 2023 ? I don't think so, because everyone still copied it in the end, but that gave them time to work on a v4.

I do understand what you are saying in regards to common clause vs open-source and that seems fair. I will consider this further because we haven't taken a final decision in that regards but I am currently tending more towards something like common clause vs open source.

3. If Trezor supports NFC you should be able to restore it on a Trezor. You also have the option of using a seed phrase as opposed to Shamir which means you can restore it anywhere and you will also have the option to save Shamir directly as words if you don't want to use Ace Cards so for anyone who supports SLIP-0039 if you used words on paper you can restore it wherever you want.

Edit: I read some more as well and it seems you are correct, adding a restriction for commercial use cases makes the code not respect open-source rules anymore. I was genuinely not aware of this beforehand. I will give this some more thought and see if we want to go the source available vs fully open source route. My fear is exactly the one described above; i.e. someone forking it the next day and launching a competitor.

Would be honestly really great to hear some opinions of why you think open source is better vs source available.

Hey, thanks for the message and sorry for the delay, I had been working on a few things these past few days.

So regarding blank NFC rings, yeah of course I know what you mean, but the rings you're looking at most usually come with what are called NFC Tags (https://www.nxp.com/products/wireless-connectivity/nfc-hf/ntag-for-tags-and-labels:NTAG-TAGS-AND-LABELS) which is essentially NFC chips, but very low-power / low storage type of Chips (think up to 16kB total storage maximum). We use NXP P71D321 (https://www.nxp.com/products/security-and-authentication/security-controllers/smartmx3-p71d321-secure-and-flexible-microcontroller:SMARTMX3-P71D321) which is a microcontroller with a lot of security elements and NFC functionality. It is the same chip used in bank cards, and it runs JCOP on it; JCOP is an operating system for security sensitive systems and runs on smartcards. Furthermore to put it in a ring you have to get the FPC version of it etc; anyway what I'm trying to say is the options you see on Alibaba aren't really similar to this, to give a more good comparison, the Ace Cards (where you store Shamir) have MIFARE chips, or basically one of the best chips you can get on one of these rings from Alibaba; but we only use the cards to store a seed, so those are basically just toys used to store small amount of information and/or do simple access control (like a hotel key access card).

P71 is also one of the best options out there in terms of security and performance (that small chip has up to 344kB of Flash and 12kB of RAM which I know sounds little but it's actually a lot for a chip of this type). It was also necessary for what we're doing because JCOP alone would have occupied more than the largest NTAG offers in storage (16kB), and that's not even taking security into consideration. Just to give a simple example, if someone were to try to send unauthorized instructions to the chip repeatedly, the chip automatically bricks to protect itself etc.

Anyway, let me answer the open-source questions and everything else. First of all, I want to make clear that the code will be open-source. It is not yet open-source and I'm willing to take that criticism so let me explain why. The reason is simple, I want to publish it with a similar license to Uniswap V3; i.e. if you want to use the code for commercial purpose you will have to wait 2-3 years from every release. And free to use for anything personal. So because of that I am in discussions with lawyers to well, basically, make a license for us. In the best case scenario, the code will be made open-source before we ship the first rings, in a worst worst type of scenario it will be open source within 12 months of right now (taking into account that first rings will be shipped sometime in 4 months from now give or take).

Now to answer the other questions. The Shamir implementation we will be using is SLIP-0039, which is industry-standard, open-source and developed by Satoshi Labs (mother company of Trezor) - https://github.com/satoshilabs/slips/blob/master/slip-0039.md

The difference, here, being, the seeds themselves are actually stored on the Ace Cards as opposed to on a piece of paper, so to the question "will you be able to recover it on Trezor etc" that mostly depends on if they will accept restoring from an NFC card, maybe not on day one, but eventually I think they will. The other question is if they are compatible with SLIP-0039; Trezor I know for a fact is, the others I don't know.

I hope that answers the question but I'm happy to clarify if anything is unclear

Hey, thanks for the lengthy answer and for the information. I will spend a bit more time researching this.
1. That's honestly not something we had considered previously. It's a fair point and something I really like the sound of so while it's definitely not directly compatible with these wallets you mention right now, I do see the value in something like this so I will do some more research and see if and how we can make it compatible with such softwares as well. Realistically, this won't be something we will be able to have in an initial release but it's something I appreciate and will try to see if we can find a way to make it work in a reasonable timeframe.
2. That's fair. And perhaps a good idea. We could have a separate version of the ring that is btc-only, I guess the only issue with that is I didn't really realise there's an actual market for it? But it seems to me that there might be one. I honestly had figured that most people want something that supports multiple chains.
3. That is fair. And multi-sig is one of the things we already have planned for future releases, it's just not something we think we can finish before the initial release and I didn't want to pretend otherwise.
4. I understand this. Indeed, most wallets are built to be left at home. This one is built so you can take it with you, so yes there is an added variable because of this.

Regarding the open source discussion, I understand. My reasoning is simple, I just want to have some sort of protection in place regarding competitors forking the code for monetary purposes the next day, which is why we want to have a special license with a limited time during which it cannot be used for commerical purposes while free to use for any other purpose. After a set time (2-3 years) it can even be used for commercial purposes as that gives us enough of an edge while we work on the next iteration/release.

Just to be clear though, it's possible that we may make the code open-source before the initial batch of rings is shipped. I'm not saying we will open source in 5 years. The worst case scenario is probably that we will open source it in say 12 months from now, and the first shipment is probably going to be in about.4 months from now. But that's the worst case scenario. A reasonable scenario is probably by the end of this year. This moreso depends on the lawyers than on me which is why I don't have a fully definitive answer.

Regardless of that, we will be using the SLIP-0039 implenetation from Satoshi, which is open-source and the industry standard, so I don't think us sending the seed phrases of users to ourselves is a real risk. I'll just play devil's advocate for a second and assume the worst case scenario; let's assume that we do actually send the seed phrases of people to ourselves. I am sure you are aware to make a hardware wallet you have to make a company, have shareholders etc. If that were to happen, 1. It would probably take <24 hours for everyone to find out and probably <30 days for every shareholder to get caught, charged and sentenced to jail. It's just not worth it to do something like this. There's basically 0 gain and infinite loss potential (i.e. spending life in jail) so even discounting the fact that we use a well-known, industry standard, open source implementation for seed generation etc, this isn't a real risk, for any wallet that has a legal entity, simply because no one wants to risk life in jail for 0 gain.   

Anyway, I do agree with you on open-source, but not for that reason. The real risk of not being open-source, in my opinion, is that you cannot get properly audited / tested without having everyone try to break your code. That is, in my opinion, the actual value of open source. Because the real risk is not us sending the seed phrases but a well-funded bad actor finding some sort of backdoor / exploit etc to actually manage to retrieve n information from the ring/chip/etc. Obviously everyone releases things when they think they are secure, but nothing is 100% safe, even when open-source and battle-tested, so all the more reason to make things open-source and at least have the best chance of it being as safe as possible. So anyway, again, our intention is to make it open-source. I just want to make that clear. I just want some legal protection from day 2 copycats and waiting on that. That's all.

To give you some more context, the current steps look something like this: finish our fundraising round -> announce some of the partnerships we've been working on -> send out 100-200 rings as demo products to youtubers, influencers, industry-people etc for them to do video reviews and try out the ring and give feedback and only after all of that -> launch a pre-sale -> ship the initial orders -> give free access to order rings normally from the website.

Which is why I am saying that hopefully lawyers won't take an eternity to do what I've asked them to, in which case, in a best case scenario, by the time we ship the initial batch the code will already be open source. Anyway, I just wanted to clear this out because the reason we made the initial thread and etc is mostly because we wanted to get some community feedback. That's it. You can't buy anything now and that's not the intention.

And it was a good decision. We've received some feedback, like yours, which I believe is helpful. I honestly hadn't thought of making the hardware compatible with other softwares like Sparrow or Specter, but it's an interesting idea. Nor have I thought of having a btc-only firmware, which again seems like something worth exploring if there is enough interest.

Anyway, thanks for taking so much time to explain this. I will definitely read more about this and see if and what we can do with it.

Hey, yeah, that was a really good catch. The non-oxides component does contain silicon nitride, but I don't think it's only composed of that, even besides the oxides part of it, I believe it's a mix of multiple oxides and non-oxides.

---

It's definitely good feedback and honestly not something we had considered a lot. For now I believe a good intermeidary solution would be offering an option where you can manually lock the ring from the app for a period of time. I will consider perhaps having 2 version, but realistically, from an operational & stock perspective I'm not sure that is viable for a first version.

1. Trezor, Ledger etc are neither airgapped nor btc-only firmware. The only real difference could be multisig but I genuinely don't understand why you say it would be less secure? As for people forcing you to sign a transaction on the street, I seriously doubt that's a casual occurence, sure, there are edge-cases and dangerous locations where it could happen but it's just that, an improbable edge case. I genuinely believe it is much safer to have a ringwallet than any other software wallet (1), and in regards to comparisons with Ledger, Trezor etc the only differnece is you would have it on you, but say you have 2 rings, one you keep at home and one you keep on you. How is the one left at home any less safe than the likes of Ledger or Trezor? Considering it uses Shamir, the chip has a higher EAL rating and there's no bluetooth, wifi, inputs etc it's arguably safer than ledger or trezor.

To answer the question directly, we obviously don't recommend you go walk in a cartel-controlled neighbourhood with a ringwallet holding $1M on it, but that's completely unrelated to the technology or even the ring. You shouldn't go walk in that neighbourhoud, period. And if you do, you shouldn't have anything valuable on you, period. Because chances are whatever you have will be lost if you don't end up dead either way. Whether you have a trezor, ledger, ringwallet, nunchuck etc, the same would happen. That's not normal use case though. I highly doubt you'll be held at gunpoint on a random street/boulevard in the vast majority of countries for you to transfer the contents of your ringwallet. Especially because this is not something instant, it would take at the very least several minutes for the entire thing to happen; time in which what no one notices? It's just highly highly unlikely. And that's not even mentioning the fact that the ring has 0 markings on it of any way, there's just a very small logo on the inside of the ring. That's all.

2. Nunchuck is also a NFC card so not sure how it's safer but that's not important; I doubt that nunchuck can be run on bluewallet or sparrow software; both of which are software-wallets and genuinely less safe than a hardware solution; pretty much any hardware solution.

As for the open source part, that I genuinely understand and agree with, but as mentioned, our plan is to make it open-source, I just want us to have some time-limited legal protection from competitors just forking our code the very next day. As for us having a copy of all generated private keys, we will be using the official industry standard SLIP-0039 implementation of Shamir's Secret from Satoshi Labs which is open source, the only difference being we store it on Ace Cards as opposed to a piece of paper. Either way, with a bit of luck on the legal side I'm hopeful that it won't be long before releasing the entire code as open-source.

Basically my only wish is for us to have a 2-3 year time horizon on every release before it can be forked in a commercially product, that's all. Which is a fair thing to want I believe. 

Hey, so let's talk a bit about this.
1. Our initial purpose is indeed to target either a) existing crypto users who don't use a hardware wallet already because they're too complicated b) new entrants in the crypto market and c) experienced users who want to have some amount of money with them on-the-go and have an easy way using it. This, however, is not to say that the security of the ring is bad. It's just our user target, at least initially. Let's break it down a bit.

• There is only a single vector of attack, namely NFC. There is no bluetooth, no internet, no inputs etc.
• The chip itself is certified as EAL6+, just for comparison purposes, Ledger is EAL5+. Furthermore, if somebody tries to say inject malicious code, initiate an unnaproved transaction etc through the only existing vector of attack (NFC), then the chip automatically burns itself if it is a real risk since these are chips used normally in bank cards, that's what they were initially designed for.
• Lastly, in terms of backup we use Shamir's Secret Sharing through the Ace Cards. This is arguably, at this moment, the most advanced and secure form of actually backing up a wallet at this point. Ledger doesn't even have the option for this, the only other one I'm aware of who does have this option is Trezor and even then, you must write them down on multiple pieces of paper; whereas we allow users to store them on Ace Cards, which is easier. Now, considering that even if somebody say steals your ringwallet they cannot use it unless they also simultaneously do the following: a) steal your paired phone, b) have your phone password c) have your app password and perhaps d) unless you go home, restore the wallet and move the money.

That is all to say, sure, that's our target audience. But at the very minimum this respects at least the same levels of security that any other hardware wallet does, if not more.

2. Ok so for the second question I am genuinely not sure if I understood it correctly, so I will try to answer what I understood.
a) If you mean that our software won't be compatible with other wallet like Ledger and Trezor, I believe that is exactly how Trezor and Ledger functions as well, I'm not aware of hardware wallet software that is cross-compatible with other devices.
b) Initially the code is closed-source, yet, but that is because we are waiting on our lawyers for a way to attribute a license to our code that will protect us for say 2 years from people using the code commercially, giving us time to work on a newer version before competitors can just fork our code. That is all to say, our end goal is to make the code open-source, and release new versions as open source constantly, just with a 2 or 3 year limitation against using it for commercial purposes. Either way, just to be clear, Tangem for example has 0 open-source code and as far as I am aware, 0 intention of actually making the code open-source. So even if we were to take that route, which I don't think we will, it's not something never seen before.

Ok, that makes more sense. I'm not sure that's very good design though if you plan on using it daily / multiple times a day if you always have to take it off. I had figured it's more of a "lock your ring" type of thing which would've made a bit more sense in my opinion.

---

Hey, so let me answer this in two parts since it might be easier:

1. The case you are describing can only happen if when creating your wallet you choose to back it up with a seed phrase. This, however, is literally how a seed phrase works, it's the same case for your trezor, ledger or any other seed phrase based wallet out there. Also, the seed phrase is a physically written set of words, I don't really understand how a hacker would get a hold of this unless the "hacker" is your family/friends who got into your house, knew where your seed phrase was and then stole it?
2. But most importantly, when you setup your ringwallet initially, you get a choice about how you want to setup your wallet. Sure, you can choose the seed phrase as above, but you have the option to setup your wallet backed by Ace Cards in which case everything you've described cannot happen, because if you back it up with the Ace cards you would indeed have to restore it only through the app on another ring. Perhaps in the future we may try to add the ability of restoring Ace Cards into other places as well, but for now if your ring is set up with this backup method you can only restore it on a new ring through the app, so in this case the hacker or thief or whatever would have to find and steal multiple ace cards to even have a chance of restoring your wallet.

I see, sorry for that, I didn't really give it much thought. And yes we have that existing thread which wasn't very well done to be perfectly honest, we will probably make a more professional one a bit later on. And yes we did receive some skepticism which is generally fair and a good exercise, I did my best to answer all the questions there and will continue to do so. The product is not live yet as of now and cannot be ordered, perhaps I'll come back in this thread after there's more things made public. Thanks for the answer nonetheless.

Bitcointalk only allows you to send 2 DMs a day as a newbie and I had already answered to someone previously, so yeah. That's on the forum, not me. I don't really know why it works like that, probably to make you buy the membership I guess? Anyway, I bought a copper membership and replied to your messages.

Edit: that's fine, I understand and will continue to provide anything necessary. who knows, maybe in a few months from now you'll become a supporter after all of our messages so I'm okay with it.