October 20, 2018

RED Wallet - Alpha 2

Thank you for your patience. With all the other work going on, we've been juggling priorities. But now, at long last, it's time for an updated Red Wallet. There are still a lot of pieces in progress for future releases, but this version adds some key upgrades. If you missed the original wallet announcement, here's a short feature list from that:

  • Secure ETH and RED token transactions.
  • Support for the world's leading hardware key: the Ledger Nano S.
  • HD derivation path support: access up to 50 public addresses with the same key.
  • Fast address loading.
  • Fast balance retrieval (thanks to nodes provided by the Red Foundation).
  • Fully open source on Github.
  • Runs on Windows 7/8/10 and macOS 10.1x.
  • Under 300 KB (on both Windows and Mac), no installation, no setup, no external dependencies!
  • Tiny wallet source code: ~500 LOC of Red (plus ~110 KB of Red libs).
  • Custom USB drivers for hardware keys, written in the Red/System DSL.
  • Easy binary checking service to verify that your wallet app is a legit one!
  • Source code under audit by third-party security experts.

We've added a few more LOC. The main wallet code is now 600 LOC, and the new batch feature (explained below) is 300 LOC.

New Features and Improvements


Trezor Hardware Key Support


First, and perhaps most important, is support for Trezor hardware keys. After the Ledger Nano S, the Trezor is the most popular key out there, and they have a nice new version as well, to stay competitive. If you have a Trezor, now you can use the Red Wallet with it. As with the Ledger Nano S, the USB driver for the Trezor is written in Red/System, and built right into the wallet. An added bonus is that the Trezor is smart enough to show the correct destination address when sending RED tokens.



Note that you need the latest firmware on your Trezor for RED token amounts to show correctly. If your firmware is outdated, you may see "Unknown Token Value" on the Trezor display when sending tokens.

Batch Payments


Another nice feature, though without an obvious UI affordance yet, is batch payments. If you send the same amounts to the same addresses, on a regular basis, you'll love this. You can set up a list of addresses, amounts for each, and then click Send just once. You then need to confirm each transaction on the hardware key (that's why we prefer them), but you don't have to go back and forth between the key and the Wallet UI. Click, click, click, and away they go. If a transaction is successful, you'll see a small  appear next to it. If it fails for any reason, a × will appear. To see the detailed results, click the Results button. Successful transactions will open in a browser tab for the network they were sent on, while failed transactions will show the reason in a small window on the desktop.

To access the batch payments screen, select an address in the list, then right-click on it. Select Batch Payment from the context menu, and a batch transaction dialog will open. Add new items, or remove those you don't need. To save a batch for future use, click the Export button. To reload one, click Import. Yes, you can have multiple batches for different purposes. We have more UI changes in the works, to improve usability, and more features to come. For example, you can only send ETH in batch payments today, but we plan to support RED tokens there as well. We're also experimenting with how best to verify stored addresses. Batches are simple text files today, which you can even create by hand if you want, but may be secured in the future. Remember, always verify addresses!

Faster, Stronger, Better


We've also added some new back end pieces, so balance loading is much faster now. We believe we're the fastest wallet out there in this regard. There are also some improvements in how the Wallet handles various hardware key states, which is a fun challenging thing to test and debug, and a few small internal improvements and added tests. With this release, we'll also update our binary checking service, so you can make sure you've got an official, secure build from us. If you want  to check if your RED Wallet binary has been tampered with in any way, you can simply drag'n drop the wallet executable on our binary checking service. If it's valid, the screen will turn green and show you the version (0.2.0 for this release) and target OS. If it turns red with a warning message, please notify us on Gitter or Twitter at once. So far, we haven't had any attacks for fake wallet instances reported. And you can always access the source code, to see how it works, and have your own audits done, in addition to the audits we have done.

Download the RED Wallet application




Just click on the executable to run it (extract the .app file first on macOS), no installation or setup process required. Plug in your Ledger Nano S key and enjoy a smooth and simple experience!

Only download the RED Wallet app from this page, do not trust any other website for that.


There's a lot more in the works, but we're in the throes of preparation for Ethereum DevCon IV, with more exciting news to come on that side.

If you missed the announcement for the initial Wallet release, you can find it here.

Stay tuned, and Happy Reducing!

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