Liana Wallet is looking for 10 Bitcoiners who are willing to hop on a call with our head of product to tell us what they find most frustrating about Bitcoin self-custody. We want to know what is the biggest source of anxiety in your cold storage setup.
- you do not have to be a Liana Wallet user
- you don't have to be technical
In exchange for your time, we're happy to offer a security audit of your current setup, if you'd like a high-level sanity check to make sure you haven't overlooked any serious flaws.
If you're interested in helping us out, head on over to the link below and pick a convenient date/time:
https://calendly.com/manuel-wizardsardine/30min
Also, you can comment below about your self-custody pain points and we'll zap you.
Hi there, I'm a UI/UX designer and recently did some independent analysis on Phoenix and LaWallet for a bootcamp.
One of the most common pain points I noticed during the onboarding process for a those Bitcoin wallets is how confusing backup and recovery can be for new users. Many people don't understand what exactly they need to save, how to use it later, or why it matters. For example, mnemonics can be especially confusing. Users often don't know if they're like a password (and if so, what they're used with), or where to input them later (Any wallet? There is something specific they need? etc), and how to store it safely. When wallets provide a JSON file, users frequently don't understand what it is or how they might use it in the future.
Some understand that these things are important, but they don't get how to actually use them to recover a wallet down the line.
Onboarding Observations.
Nice-to-haves:
Questions:
Cool wallet btw!
Thanks for the great feedback! Your observations about confusion during the backup/recovery process really resonate!
The 65535 block limit on timelocks is a Bitcoin consensus thing. It may change in the future, but currently, relative timelocks cannot be longer.
The signup confirmation email for using our node should definitely include "Liana" - great point!
My biggest anxiety in my self-custody setup is figuring out a secure and reliable method to share my seed phrase or facilitate the transfer of BTC to my family in case something happens to me. Striking the right balance between keeping my keys secure and ensuring that trusted family members can access them when needed may be the biggest pain point.
Do you worry more about the transfer method (making sure they get keys, descriptors, wallet info) or do you worry that they will be unable to figure out how to successfully recover the wallet?
I worry both sides equally. Getting the keys and necessary info to them securely without risking exposure is one massive hurdle. Secondly, even with the info, they might face a steep learning curve with recovery, wallet software, and understanding UTXOs or whatever else, potentially messing it up under duress.
Bitkey is the easiest for non Bitcoiners. Multi-sig, but great UX for non tech-savvy people. The only product I could recommend to the normies in my life and feel confident they wouldn't screw up.
It has Bitkey Inheritance built in.
My biggest source of anxiety is I'm always afraid of going online. Si, I always wonder can it be that I send Bitcoin without being online through a cold wallet?
Many bitcoiners solve this problem by using an air-gapped hardware wallet. You run a node or a watch-only wallet on your internet-connected laptop, but it doesn't have any private keys. It can only see your wallet balance, not spend.
When you want to spend, you create a transaction with this laptop and then use QR codes or sd cards to transfer the transaction to your hardware wallet for signing. After your hardware wallet signs the transaction, you use the same method to transfer it back to your laptop to broadcast to the network.
BTCSessions has a number of Youtube tutorials on how to do this. It's worth checking them out.
Thanks. I will try it the next time.
the thing to look for is PSBT
partially signed bitcoin transactions
When moving to self custody, often people are withdrawing significant chunks of bitcoin from an exchange.
That's very stressful, because it's something people don't do all the time. In fact, they may have done this a total of ZERO times. The software is unfamiliar, the hardware is unfamiliar, the terminology is unfamiliar, AND you're dealing with potentially large amounts. Yikes. No wonder people avoid self custody.
There needs to be a "baby steps" path into self custody. Practicing with tiny amounts. Learn through doing what a private key/seed phrase is. Learn through doing what "recovering" a wallet means.
I wrote a the below book to walk people through a carefully curated set of exercises to get them comfortable with self custody, and understand how it works in practice.
Bitcoin, Hands-On: 28 “learn by doing” exercises to master the basics of managing your own Bitcoin, including wallets, transactions, and self custody
It's certainly true that there is no substitute for practicing with small amounts!
My greatest anxiety is like making backup copies that can support online. In case something happens with my physical copies.
It's not always a great idea to store key material online. This is one reason we like multisigs and timelocked recovery keys: if you store your keys separately and you lose one key or the backup, you can still recover because you have some fallbacks.
I am totally aware of this, however something tells me that it is also essential to be able to recover some private key that is online, my experiments have so far gone well, obviously I do not store the key as it is, first it passes through three processes or layers of cryptography, to finally host it online. and thus minimize or eliminate the possibility of running the irrigation that someone can decipher that.
My big one’s keeping backups safe from prying eyes.
That's the thing: you always have to put it somewhere...
Welcome to the world of self-responsibility!