The Frankenwallet — an ongoing project in the Cardano ecosystem since the beginning of 2021 — was originally conceived in 2020 to secure operations & assets for one of Cardano’s oldest stake pools. Soon afterward, it was further developed as a “sandbox” environment for cryptocurrency holders to work more privately and securely with their wallets, tools, and data:
This site contains the documentation for users to build their own Frankenwallet, rather than downloadable software. Though it had already been published completely through previous years, this year the project is being more officially advanced to full open source status: requiring visibility (and hopefully participation) from an interested, knowledgeable, and demanding audience.
The goal for Frankenwallet “general” users (i.e. neither operators like SPOs nor developers) is to build a Linux environment on a removable drive that hosts all the user’s software wallets (generally browser extensions). Confinement to an encrypted, detachable drive, with limited exposure to the Internet, creates some assurances of privacy and security which — if adhering to rigorous standards of encryption — can create a relatively safe place for crypto asset storage & backup and interaction with dApps: as per this model of a “cool” (not quite “cold” or air-gapped) environment: The Frankenwallet > Cool environments
Please post any general questions below and I will be monitoring these closely in the days, weeks and months ahead. Ideally, you would post any topics for discussion of the methods & security standards here in the GitHub repository (I will transcribe any below unresolved discussions into the repo as necessary): github.com/rphair/frankenwallet/discussions
… and if you believe you have found a particular fault, please post an issue by the usual means here: github.com/rphair/frankenwallet/issues
Keep in mind the installation & usage of the Frankenwallet assumes the ability to confidently work with Linux installation, the Linux shell, and systems administration requirements like disk partitioning and software configuration. The Frankenwallet is not intended to teach or offer help with any of these more elementary subjects: and as highlighted on the front page its usage is always at one’s own risk.
The best kinds of discussions and issues will be from:
- users with a strong technical interest in online privacy & security issues, including workflow encryption;
- Cardano veterans needing to isolate crypto wallets, dApps, staking vaults, governance tools, and backups of confidential records (like passphrases) from their usual operating environment;
- community leaders concerned that widespread use of software wallets on “daily driver” desktops is a general problem that needs at least 1 community solution.
If these apply to you — and you have a GitHub account, even without comments or a review to contribute — please consider starring this repository and subscribing to email updates to follow further developments:
… and to begin with a walk-though tutorial on the Frankenwallet, you can visit this introductory article: