I saw you are using 500mA battery for Cypherock and I wonder can you say what that model is exactly?
Some people would like to replace it when it gets dead, but I don't know how complicated is to open your hardware wallet, and would this break anything or make it unusable (not counting warranty void).
I am just watching reviews about Cypherock available on youtube, including most recent with Crypto Guide, so I will comment more about it later.

We were never using a battery in the hardware wallet. Can you point out the link where you saw this?


Don't recommend opening the hardware since it is ultrasonic welded. Better would be to buy another device or recover the private keys from the cards through an NFC enabled smartphone.


Sure thanks.

They should remove the word 'battery' to avoid further confusion since the device has no battery. The hardware wallet has a 5V USB input that matches the electricity supply of computer USB ports that is usually 5V as well. 

Thank you for flagging it. Will do the needful to prevent further confusion.

There are considerable benefits of PIN backup over solutions opted by other wallets:
1. Backuping up PIN is 100x easier than backing up seedphrases. (Like mandatory in all the rest of the wallets)

• Easier to write, no mis-writing mistakes.
  
• Easier to store. Need smaller space.

2. PIN backups are not single point of failure like seedphrases [ IMPORTANT ]

• PIN backup can be taken at 'n' number of places as it is not a single point of failure.
  Same cannot be said with seedphrases. User cannot take 'n' number of backups as losing any one of them is catastrophic.

That being said, we agree with Crypto guide's point of view. Therefore, we are redesigning our onboarding flow so that there is a substantial warning while user sets up the PIN. It will be same as other wallets give a substantial warning to backup your seedphrase.

Once our Inheritance Solution is released. Forgetting PIN won't be a problem as our Inheritance Solution will take care of it. (More on it on it's launch)


I agree, since we are a new player in the market. There is a lot of features that we need to implement and that's why our product roadmap is jampacked(currently not public, will be soon).

The underlying security of BIP-39 Seedphrases is exactly the same for all the wallets. PINs are just the top layer security to prevent anyone from getting into the device. What i meant by seedphrase being single point of failure was: Not Seedphrases but Seedphrase backups are a single point of failure. Anyone getting access to your backup can wipe you out completely. Here is a great example that happened recently.

https://twitter.com/lopp/status/1604599964713328640

PIN Backups which are 4-8 character long can be hidden indistinguishably anywhere. As compared to seedphrase backups which are exponentially much more difficult to hide.

An unauthorised entity getting hands on seedphrase backup can drain you out as they are so easy to recognise and the only component needed to wipe you out. PIN backups are almost impossible to find if hidden properly. On top of that, even with access to PIN, attacker needs atleast 2 components of the wallet in order to break into your funds.

User can export seedphrase from X1 and it takes under a minute to do so. X1 being BIP-39 compatible means it works with all the mainstream software and hardware wallets and users can seamlessly shift from X1 to any other wallet, or vice versa.

Here is how you can do so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W22TcY8MtQ
 
Cypherock currently is 20+ member team. 

PIN code is saved on device and that means that it can be hacked and extracted, it's just a matter of time when this will happen.
Advantage of additional passphrase compared to PIN code is that it is not stored anywhere on device and there is nothing that can be hacked.
I am not saying PIN codes are bad for hardware wallets, but I wouldn't trust them to keep my coins safe.

OK, it's clear now.
Thank you for explanation.

PIN in our case is never stored on the device, it stored on the X1 cards that are EAL 5+ certified. The share on the device is encrypted too which is decrypted only when the card is unlocked. Hence, even if someone hacks the device, they cannot brute force the PIN.


But you can bruteforce the passphrase compared to PIN which is dangerous if it is a short pass phrase. Passphrase we don't recommend to basic users. At the same time, if you want, you can setup the passphrase on our wallets as well.


I think it comes down to personal preference. Since there is the geographical distribution of the cards as well in our case, there are users who don't even set a PIN and rely on the geographic distribution as a security mechanism.

Interesting.
So can you tell us what exactly is stored on actual Cypherock device?
There must be some data and information about accounts, history, transactions, so I wonder is that stored on device or also on cards?

I get the point that you wanted to achieve simplification with PIN code, but watching all Cypherock review videos I still think it's a bit complicated to handle and tap all those cards multiple times.
Few more negative things I noticed about Cypherock X1 and I want to see this being added in future, there is no support for Multisig, no support for full Bitcoin node, no signing messages, only one account for coin, and no coin control.

1. The device is the processing house to provide coin-specific functionality. The permanent storage of all the account secret is on the cards. To provide some authenticity check, the device stores private keys of its own in the Secure chip (ATECC). Apart from that, the device also stores some session keys specific to enable a secure execution environment.
2. The device has access to PIN (and its subsequent hash) only for a short duration (one session) of time in its RAM. No information about PIN is stored on the device. Whenever a user enters PIN it is erased right after it's used. The cards store the double hash of the PIN permanently to provide an authentication mechanism whenever someone tries to access the user data on the card. The storage of PIN digest on the card is fully managed by JCOP OS that is EAL 5+ certified which provides in-built safety even from side-channel attacks.
3. If the user has set a PIN, then the shard is first encrypted and then stored in the NVM. If there is no PIN, the shard is stored as it is. The decryption is done using the first hash of the PIN. The handling of PIN is unaffected by this bahaviour since the nonce for encryption is stored on the cards. The nonce for encryption acts as salt for the encryption along with hash of PIN.
4. information about accounts, history, and transactions are never stored on the device or cards. They are only available with the desktop companion (CySync) application.



I agree that these are minor UX issues at this point. This is what we are currently solving at the moment. This will get improved in another month.


I can understand. These are things that are part of the roadmap already.

We never store the IP addresses. After the db hacks that other wallets faced, we don't store any information ourselves that will reveal personal information about the user. You can find our latest privacy policy here - https://www.cypherock.com/privacy

Sure, will do.