How wallets make money? It is worse than you think.

[ReiMomo]

Most likely fee you see on most wallet are transaction fee which taken by miner (for altcoin it might be people who stake coin/run node), not fee which taken by developer of the wallet.

So you mean that the developer will not care about the earning as a developer?

I guess custodial wallet will most likely depend on the fees earning on the fees and also the fees when you are swapping your bitcoin into altcoins. But if only for donations, I dont know if there is someone willing to donate, even me, I didn't experience donating into developers of wallet because I thought they had already gain profit by collecting the fees.

If so, developers from open-source wallet will I guess amke their own wallet once they are expert on this.

[bitmover]

It's true for open-source wallet developer. But developer of closed-source, but non-custodial wallet could earn from another way such as :
1. Showing guide/website about which include their referral link
2. 3rd party advertising (example: https://www.blockchain.com/advertise)
3. Advertise their other for-profit service (example: Blockchain wallet promote https://exchange.blockchain.com/)

I dont know if there is someone willing to donate, even me, I didn't experience donating into developers of wallet because I thought they had already gain profit by collecting the fees.

At least for popular open-source software (not limited to open-source wallet), there are some people who willing make donation.

Coinomi also receive revenue from ads inside the wallet.
I don't know if that is enough...

About open source. I don't know any multicurrency wallet which is open source. This is a problem already mentioned a few times. This could a good opportunity for coinomi.

[stompix]

I'm not sure about that. IIRC, there are different set of questions if you choose tokens on ethereum or tokens on other blockchains. Under ethereum, they also ask if you made changes to 'this or that' code. I guess it would require them more work if token devs made more tweaks.

Probably I rushed a bit to this conclusion, I'm not dealing with tokens that much and even less with the mechanism behind them, but I still believe that if a token would come with innovative features that would require lots of work it would also be an attractive project and due to demand or at least hype they would have to offer support even without pay. That being said, yeah, it was a shot in the dark, and maybe I'm underestimating the resources needed by a wide margin.

It is interesting that all bitcoin forks were almsot instantly supported, because everyone was after them.
Then, we there are not more forks, they start asking for money to keep supporting.

Yeah, it was a pretty good advertisement, we support all shitforks, they used those as an advertisement when it was cheaper to do so, not that they don't have anything to gain from advertising they support bitcoinxxlmegaalfa they are demanding money, one side I understand them, nothing is free, but I can't shake the feeling that looking from the moral point of view its nor really the same. This tactic reminds me somewhat of exchanges that support no name coins because they would be the only ones where bounty hunters can go and exchange their new coins and thus gaining a bit of traffic, volume, coins, enough .....to get hacked! At least with coinomi that's not possible.

Coinomi also receive revenue from ads inside the wallet.

Didn't knew that, hmm, makes me even less anxious to try it out.

[Findingnemo]

I thought that most wallets make through the fee for each transaction. They will put a small mark up with the transaction fees and that's it. I didn't know that they're asking the same thing just as the exchanges to keep a coin listed and supported.

2 BTC for the example of Bitcore to be maintained. That's quite a lot for a fee and it's not that actually far from the fee that other exchanges are asking, of course except Binance and other the same tier exchanges.

If wallet take extra charge than fee then people won't be really using it so donations are the only possible way to make money for them or they can integrate with exchange to make money like blockchain but not much people trusting those kind of wallets as well. To list a shit coin I won't mind the listing fee because they are also paying the fee for getting listed into the exchanges so the same rule followed to list on the wallet as well.

[bitmover]

I thought that most wallets make through the fee for each transaction. They will put a small mark up with the transaction fees and that's it. I didn't know that they're asking the same thing just as the exchanges to keep a coin listed and supported.

2 BTC for the example of Bitcore to be maintained. That's quite a lot for a fee and it's not that actually far from the fee that other exchanges are asking, of course except Binance and other the same tier exchanges.

If wallet take extra charge than fee then people won't be really using it so donations are the only possible way to make money for them or they can integrate with exchange to make money like blockchain but not much people trusting those kind of wallets as well. To list a shit coin I won't mind the listing fee because they are also paying the fee for getting listed into the exchanges so the same rule followed to list on the wallet as well.

Without a good wallet to support, the altcoin will probably lose more value.
Who wants to download a wallet just for bitcoinbitcore, for example? Having coinomi support is quite handy and make your coin more popular and easier to hold

[Findingnemo]

I thought that most wallets make through the fee for each transaction. They will put a small mark up with the transaction fees and that's it. I didn't know that they're asking the same thing just as the exchanges to keep a coin listed and supported.

2 BTC for the example of Bitcore to be maintained. That's quite a lot for a fee and it's not that actually far from the fee that other exchanges are asking, of course except Binance and other the same tier exchanges.

If wallet take extra charge than fee then people won't be really using it so donations are the only possible way to make money for them or they can integrate with exchange to make money like blockchain but not much people trusting those kind of wallets as well. To list a shit coin I won't mind the listing fee because they are also paying the fee for getting listed into the exchanges so the same rule followed to list on the wallet as well.

Without a good wallet to support, the altcoin will probably lose more value.
Who wants to download a wallet just for bitcoin, for example? Having coinomi support is quite handy and make your coin more popular and easier to hold

Of course the coin will get more reputation if it is available on reputed wallets.Coins created from nowhere and got the value from the fund raising and they allocate certain amount for the development so they have to spend them for the needs like these.

IMO people who holds huge amount of bitcoin will go for paper wallet or at least hardware wallets and all other other HD wallet users are moderate holders, their portfolio value be in thousands only.

[gentlemand]

Who wants to download a wallet just for bitcoin, for example? Having coinomi support is quite handy and make your coin more popular and easier to hold

You'd probably be better off doing that. I can well imagine people will downgrade the security and competence of their wallet to accommodate shitcoins and stick the BTC in there as well for convenience.

The best Bitcoin wallets have been around for much longer and have many more eyes on them than much of the multi stuff out there.

[bitmover]

Who wants to download a wallet just for bitcoin, for example? Having coinomi support is quite handy and make your coin more popular and easier to hold

You'd probably be better off doing that. I can well imagine people will downgrade the security and competence of their wallet to accommodate shitcoins and stick the BTC in there as well for convenience.

That was a typo. My auto correct in the phone did that. lol
I edited the post. There is no sense in having a wallet just for bitcore (or any other fork)

Who wants to download a wallet just for bitcoin bitcore, for example? Having coinomi support is quite handy and make your coin more popular and easier to hold

[sunsilk]

I thought that most wallets make through the fee for each transaction. They will put a small mark up with the transaction fees and that's it. I didn't know that they're asking the same thing just as the exchanges to keep a coin listed and supported.

Most likely fee you see on most wallet are transaction fee which taken by miner (for altcoin it might be people who stake coin/run node), not fee which taken by developer of the wallet.

What I thought of is that they are adding a bit of satoshis where they get profit through marking up the fees that we pay for using them. I don't see any other source of revenue for them except the listing fee that they are taking from altcoin developers who are supporting. But thanks for that clarity.

If wallet take extra charge than fee then people won't be really using it so donations are the only possible way to make money for them or they can integrate with exchange to make money like blockchain but not much people trusting those kind of wallets as well. To list a shit coin I won't mind the listing fee because they are also paying the fee for getting listed into the exchanges so the same rule followed to list on the wallet as well.

I forgot about donations as I thought this only happens for most projects that really don't have a source to make to sustain the service. But in coinomi, what I've really thought of is the fees but it's all clear to me now as they have another source for generating revenue. I think the commission they get through changelly and coinswitch is kind of decent.

[bL4nkcode]

I thought that most wallets make through the fee for each transaction. They will put a small mark up with the transaction fees and that's it. I didn't know that they're asking the same thing just as the exchanges to keep a coin listed and supported.

Most likely fee you see on most wallet are transaction fee which taken by miner (for altcoin it might be people who stake coin/run node), not fee which taken by developer of the wallet.

What I thought of is that they are adding a bit of satoshis where they get profit through marking up the fees that we pay for using them. I don't see any other source of revenue for them except the listing fee that they are taking from altcoin developers who are supporting. But thanks for that clarity.

Exchanges and custodial wallet do that way since they send in bulk and not for non-custodial wallet such coinomi.

[Lordhermes]

I have basically gone through your explanation op and its nice to understand this from a clear definition you gave, I have always thought of that but I never come to a clear conclusion about wallet profit and its maintenance costs.

But similarly, I'm curious about some wallet that do not support altcoin but only the first mover advantage coin like bitcoin, in your explanation you mentioned bitcore and that's altcoin on coinomi right?, let's take an example of Bitamp wallet that support only bitcoin, should it be the same that, bitcoin is paying Bitamp some fee? I doubt if they could do such, aren't they getting their income from withdrawal fee? Let me understand this scenario please.

[gentlemand]

All the shitforks I had in Coinomi including Bitcore are now goners. It offers the private key to extract. That didn't seem to take very long. I can imagine this is going to happen time and again.

I had even more shitforks on Bitpie/Bither and they dropped tons with no notice at all. Events like this may well spell the effective end for stuff like this. No one is going to bother with 10-20 unknown core wallets apart from a handful of freaks. The only alternative is an exchange and they're just as likely to kill them off. 

[bitmover]

All the shitforks I had in Coinomi including Bitcore are now goners. It offers the private key to extract. That didn't seem to take very long. I can imagine this is going to happen time and again.

I had even more shitforks on Bitpie/Bither and they dropped tons with no notice at all. Events like this may well spell the effective end for stuff like this. No one is going to bother with 10-20 unknown core wallets apart from a handful of freaks. The only alternative is an exchange and they're just as likely to kill them off. 

Forks are good as long as you claim them and exchange them to btc as fast as you can.
Btg, btw,btd,bca,etc are all worthless now.
But as soon as thet were released you could get around 0.1BTC for each btc (if you collected them all)

So coinomi was a pretty handy wallet for those users who had bitcoin before 2017

[suchmoon]

Or download it's reference/full node wallet if internet/storage is cheap on place where you live.

If the coin's team is concerned about it they could relatively easily implement a light wallet... someone mentioned Electrum forks, that's what I used for some shitforks where available.

And if the team doesn't care then the coin deserves to die. I can't imagine a better market-based solution to the shitcoining situation. It doesn't make coinomi's actions any less sleazy but they're not really the root of the problem.

[bitmover]

Or download it's reference/full node wallet if internet/storage is cheap on place where you live.

If the coin's team is concerned about it they could relatively easily implement a light wallet... someone mentioned Electrum forks, that's what I used for some shitforks where available.

My main concern when using Electrum Forks is security. The fork Electrum for the fork might be a scam just to steal someone's private keys. It is important to double check everything when claiming forked coins.

It is very handy to have a wallet that can be somewhat trusted (like coinomi) to claim forks.

Coinomi may not be as safe and trusted as ledger/trezor, but they are not stealing my private keys. A random electrum fork might.

[EdenHazard]

Maybe they should consider make their wallet open-source again since they could obtain volunteer who,
1. maintain code for specific cryptocurrency/token
2. run full node/server which used to obtain address transaction history

I thought that most wallets make through the fee for each transaction. They will put a small mark up with the transaction fees and that's it. I didn't know that they're asking the same thing just as the exchanges to keep a coin listed and supported.

Most likely fee you see on most wallet are transaction fee which taken by miner (for altcoin it might be people who stake coin/run node), not fee which taken by developer of the wallet.

Is there any guarantee that the wallet would last for long if it's open-sourced?

Since the whole project might be voluntary worked and the one that could makes them keep working , kepp updating the wallet is money, i can't see any guarantee an open-sourced wallet could survive for long time enough. That's why there must be something to gain , listing fee is just one of them but for reasonable one asking 2btc for just a maintenance reason is way too much, they are not an exchange though.

[libert19]

I had chat with one of coinomi guys, they were self funded at first and as they got established they started charging for integrations. I mean that's how any business works.

[plast555]

I had chat with one of coinomi guys, they were self funded at first and as they got established they started charging for integrations. I mean that's how any business works.

exactly and there is nothing wrong in that. they first worked by their own. built the product. established it and even listed so many coins with their own funds. and now when they have some demand in market they are charging money for new coin  integrations. this is normal and common. there is nothing ethically wrong in this.
and I've used coinomi. that is a very nice and secure wallet and very smooth too.
I used it for BTC. ethereum , USDT and some other Ethereum tokens. I did sending and receiving both and all worked perfect.

[gentlemand]

If the coin's team is concerned about it they could relatively easily implement a light wallet... someone mentioned Electrum forks, that's what I used for some shitforks where available.

Quite a few shitfork Electrums turned out to be malware. Which is why wallets like this probably can get what they want most of the time. An unknown wallet is a pretty pungent and potent thing. I can see why most don't want anything to do with them, including me.

[DaveF]

I had chat with one of coinomi guys, they were self funded at first and as they got established they started charging for integrations. I mean that's how any business works.

I guess part of my question would be why 2BTC now and for how long is that good for?
Is their daemon is sucking up 10x the resources of other coin daemons and the 2BTC is just an excuse to boot them.
Or was there some deal of we give you "X" BTX worth "Y" but the value crashed so much that it made it not worth it?
Did coinomi just get greedy?

We know part of the story, without knowing all of it it's just a guess.

-Dave