Block Inc’s Hardware Lead Shares Proposed Wallet Prototype

UTC by Godfrey Benjamin · 3 min read
Block Inc’s Hardware Lead Shares Proposed Wallet Prototype
Photo: Jesse Dorogusker / Twitter

The new hardware wallets from Block come as the first time the company will be making its foray into creating a usable product for the digital currency ecosystem it has backed as a corporate investor.

Jesse Dorogusker, hardware lead at American technology and payments company Block Inc (NYSE: SQ), has shared a peek into the crypto hardware wallet the firm has been working on. Per the pictures of the devices shared on Twitter, they are designed to be hexagonal in shape with what looks like a ‘rockey’ finishing as Jack Dorsey chose to call them.

Hardware wallets are a device created as a more secure alternative for storing cryptocurrencies rather than keeping them in online wallets on offer by trading platforms. The security of hardware wallets lies in the fact that they are typically not connected online and as such, are free from any form of hack. While not a very pronounced crypto-linked tool that everyone tends to have, they are becoming very popular, especially for those who wish to HODL their coins for a very long time.

The new hardware wallets from Block come as the first time the company will be making its foray into creating a usable product for the digital currency ecosystem it has backed as a corporate investor. The wallets have a number of nice features including a fingerprint sensor and USB type C charging ports respectively. While it is unclear whether the prototypes displayed will be the final products or not, commenters on social media do not seem to be disappointed at what Dorogusker posted on his Twitter timeline.

Block Inc’s Hardware Wallet: A Tough Market to Break

Unlike Block Inc’s hardware wallet that is just coming into the limelight, a number of players have been serving customers in this regard for quite some time. As a result, the wallets from the San Francisco, California-based company will have to brandish a whole new set of revolutionary features in order to break the market that is currently being dominated by Ledger and Trezor wallets respectively.

Knowing the competition that currently exists in the space, Block has notably integrated a number of features that will relatively make using the product easier for its users. In a Blog Post shared back in March, the firm confirmed that the wallet will come with a compatible mobile application through which transactions will mostly be carried out.

“Customers will primarily manage their money by interacting with the mobile application we’re building, and will only need to interact with the hardware in combination with the mobile app to authorize larger, less frequent transactions above an amount of their choosing,” the blog post reads, “For transactions that require using the wallet hardware, we want our customers to be able to unlock their wallets securely, but with ease – an unlikely combination that historically has not existed in the market. We believe PINs, passwords, and seed phrases are confusing and often not secure given the workarounds normal people have to create given all the friction. This compounds when the need for those passwords are more rare.”

While the fingerprint sensor is the firm’s solution for passwords, it said it is working on a whole lot of other recovery options that can easily be adopted by the user.

Blockchain News, Cryptocurrency News, News
Related Articles