Kraken just released their self-custody wallet for both iOS and Android. I am a big fan of Kraken, and this wallet looks pretty interesting. Some of benefits are really interesting such as:
- Fully Open Source
- No data collection
- Self Custody
It is new, and it is hard to tell how much of this is true, but Kraken has lead the way with security in the crypto space. I watch a popular YouTuber who baits scammers and works with Kraken to identify them and get them to justice.
I am not personally a big fan of mobile wallets, I did use BRD for a while before they were acquired by Coinbase. As a hot wallet, it was a fantastic and very convenient option.
I currently use both Ledger and Trezor devices, although I have been considering getting some Tangem cards as well. Depending on your tolerance, this might be a suitable cold wallet storage option. I am not sure I would use it that way, but I have a lot of respect for Kraken and using a dedicated spare phone is a very good security practice. As far as I can see, the Kraken app cannot be used as an air gaped solution. If security is of your utmost concern, this is a very good practice for your long term crypto holdings.
If you are not familiar with the term "air gaped", this is when the wallet is never connected to the Internet and thus never at risk of being compromised. The device is used to sign a transaction given to it via a medium like an SD card, QR code, or USB Stick and then the signed transaction is returned back to the online device. While it is very inconvenient, it is extremely secure.
Due to how new this is, I couldn't find it in the iPhone app store, but if you click on the Kraken developer, it will list it as one of the available apps and I was able to install it that way.
I installed it and gave it a try and it has a really nice process of creating and importing a new wallet. Creating additional wallets is super easy and is only a single button press. Although these additional wallets are off the same seed chain and are not separate.
When you create a new wallet, it uses a 12 word seed phrase. This is not my preferred option and I couldn't find a way to do a 24 word seed phrase. The actual security difference between a 12 and 24 word seed phrase is not as high as you would guess, but I still prefer to stick with 24 word seed phrases. For a hot wallet, this is more than enough. Even for five or six digit cold wallet it is extremely secure. Although you can create 24 seed word wallet and import it no problem. You can also turn on Face ID for additional security.
As of right now, the Kraken wallet only supports a few networks:
- Bitcoin
- Ethereum
- Polygon
- Dodge
- Solana
- Arbitrum
- Base
- Optimism
For most, this is more than enough but it is not going to support as many networks as other hardware wallets. It does however have NFT support on most of those networks. It also supports popular DEFI platforms like UniSwap.
It looks like a nice, secure, open source, and no cost option.
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