What should a modern mobile wallet prioritize for Bitcoin Cash?

Wallets
#1

Hi everyone,

I work with Gem Wallet, an open-source self-custody wallet that supports Bitcoin Cash. I’m here to better understand the BCH-specific needs that mobile wallets may still be handling poorly.

For people who regularly use BCH on mobile, where do you currently experience the most friction?

I’m particularly interested in areas such as everyday payments, transaction and fee clarity, address handling, privacy, coin control, merchant payments, CashTokens, reusable payment addresses, and interoperability with BCH applications.

Which one or two capabilities would most improve your experience, and which existing wallet currently handles them best?

I’ll relay useful feedback to our development team. This is intended as product research rather than a promotional announcement.

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#2

Hello! Welcome to Bitcoin Cash Research :slight_smile:

I’m the lead developer for Selene Wallet, one of a handful of community-favorite BCH-only wallet apps.

I think a highly underserved niche in BCH revolves around the “Store of Value” use case. This may sound ironic, but I think it’s especially pertinent in the face of the recent Coinkite/Coldcard news.

A highly user-friendly wallet that introduces novel self-custody experiences to BCH, such as covenant-enforced vaults, sub-accounts/child accounts, NFC-based payments and custody, or emulations of traditional banking instruments like CDs could be a huge benefit to BCH and its users.

We acknowledge that traditional BIP39 wallets have major drawbacks that detract from the overall user experience of self-custody and can easily lead to catastrophic financial loss. So it’d be nice to see more product development in that direction.

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#3

Thanks for the welcome and the thoughtful feedback. The store-of-value angle is particularly useful because most mobile-wallet discussions focus almost entirely on payments.

Covenant-enforced vaults and sub-accounts stand out as potentially valuable mobile experiences, especially if they can reduce the consequences of seed exposure, device compromise, or accidental spending. The main challenge seems to be presenting the underlying security model clearly enough that users understand the recovery and withdrawal conditions.

If you had to prioritize one of these capabilities for current BCH users, which would you choose? For a covenant vault, what would you consider the most useful minimum design: delayed withdrawals with a separate recovery key, spending limits, guardian-assisted recovery, or something else? Any existing BCH contract or implementation you consider a good reference would also be helpful.

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#4

I’d look into existing work from flowguard.cash and OPTN Wallet (@lightswarm) who are both at the frontier of covenant-based BCH wallets. Also look into XO Stack (xo.cash) from General Protocols.

Pretty much everything you mentioned could be valuable, so it really depends on where you’d like to allocate your own development resources.

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#5

Thanks, these are useful references. FlowGuard, OPTN Wallet, and XO Stack should give us a clearer view of the covenant designs already being explored on BCH and, importantly, how those capabilities are presented to users.

We’ll use them as inputs when evaluating which store-of-value and self-custody improvements would be most appropriate for Gem Wallet’s scope.

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#6

Welcome to BCH research! I agree with @kzKallisti, I think safe storage of coins is a big area of strong development we are underserving (I also work with Selene, but speaking for us and the whole BCH wallet scene in general).

My suggestion is the key area is social recoverability. As you’ve identified, the ease of use is critical (if something is too hard or too confusing people won’t bother), but secondary to that is the actual recoverability. Trying to get people to go through some complex multisig setup is going to be a nightmare, but if you can make it simple for them to simply assign themselves plus 4 of their 5 closest trustworthy friends/family (who have a simple app or interface that lets them be one of the multisig signers and clearly explains how to be involved) in a 3 of 5 multisig - then my instinct is that would already be a huge leap forward. It’s what I’d like to explore at Selene when we get the time.

People already have existing trust networks. We just need to leverage them. Bonus: this approach is also a default inheritance scheme! If someone dies, their coins are already recoverable by their network.

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#7

Thanks @BitcoinCashPodcast. Framing social recovery around trust relationships people already have makes the idea much easier to understand, and the inheritance benefit is compelling.

The UX would need to work for guardians as well as the wallet owner: simple onboarding, a clear explanation that no guardian can act alone, replacement of unavailable or compromised guardians, and a recovery flow that users can verify before they actually need it.

For a minimum design, would you favor conventional 3-of-5 multisig where every spend uses the threshold, or a policy where the owner can spend normally while the guardian threshold activates only through a delayed recovery path? The latter seems potentially easier for everyday use while also giving the owner time to cancel an unauthorized recovery attempt.

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#8

I imagine “daily spending” amounts should be held in a wallet just owned by the owner. Or maybe you make some covenants so they can spend up to a customised threshold as a single sig, but any more or any more per a certain amount of time (blocks) requires a bigger quorum.

The point of the quorum is also to keep you safe in case of wrench attacks, so you don’t want large amounts of money to move unilaterally.

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#9

Thanks @BitcoinCashPodcast. That suggests a useful separation between a single-signature spending balance and a protected savings balance.

The protected balance could permit a configurable amount to be spent by the owner within a time window, while larger or unusually frequent withdrawals require the guardian quorum. That addresses both recovery and wrench-attack risk without adding multisig friction to every routine payment.

This gives Gem Wallet a clearer product model to evaluate: everyday funds remain convenient, while larger savings receive policy-based protection.

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