Radix Wallet

The Radix Wallet is a mobile-first cryptocurrency wallet built by RDX Works, developed to manage $XRD and other tokens on the Radix network. The wallet acts as a gateway to decentralized finance (DeFi) applications built on Radix, enabling users to securely store assets, connect to dApps, and access a range of web3 services. It can be downloaded from https://wallet.radixdlt.com.

Overview

The Radix Wallet is intended to serve as the primary gateway for users to access and manage their digital assets and identities on the Radix network. It functions similarly to wallets on other cryptocurrency networks like MetaMask or Trust Wallet, but includes additional features specific to leveraging Radix network capabilities like smart accounts and transaction manifests.

A key focus in the wallet's development was ease of use, asset safety, and availability across devices. This was enabled by innovations like multi-factor security, simplified recovery from lost credentials, seamless connectivity between mobile and desktop environments, and displaying transparent insights on all wallet assets. The result is a crypto wallet designed to bring an uncomplicated mainstream user experience to interacting with Web3 services.

Features

• Safety and Recovery: The wallet allows for multi-factor security and recovery of accounts, preventing loss of funds if a user's phone is lost. This is enabled through the use of smart accounts on the Radix ledger.
• Availability Everywhere: Radix Connect technology facilitates connectivity between the mobile wallet and desktop browsers for a seamless user experience across devices. This uses peer-to-peer WebRTC connections rather than a centralized server.
• Intuitive Design: The wallet development prioritized simplified onboarding and ease of use based on extensive user experience testing. This testing led to significant changes in the original account model.
• Understanding Assets: The native support for assets on the Radix network means the wallet can directly access configurations and metadata to display transparent insights on owned tokens, NFTs, liquidity pools and other assets.

Components

Smart Accounts

Smart Accounts are components on the Radix ledger where users hold their assets. They are similar to accounts on other crypto networks but provide additional functionality. Each Smart Account has an address that can be used to receive tokens and assets. The Radix Wallet allows users to easily manage multiple Smart Accounts.

Smart Accounts contain built-in ‘vaults’ for holding native assets, instead of relying on separate token contracts like other platforms. This allows for direct balance lookups rather than cross-referencing various contracts. Smart Accounts also include programmable logic, such as the ability to configure multi-factor control and recovery. By using "badges" and Access Controllers, robust security schemes can be implemented without users having to secure a single seed phrase.

Preferences can also be set in Smart Accounts, like whether to accept deposits of unknown tokens or reject them.

Because Smart Accounts are Radix components, they can be created "virtually" without issuing an on-ledger transaction. This allows generating an address and receiving assets quickly and easily.

Personas

Personas provide an easy way for users to login to Radix dApps without using passwords. They also facilitate selective sharing of user data with websites.

Personas are created in the Radix Wallet. Each one has a name and can have associated data like an email address or shipping info. Users can utilize one main Persona or create multiples suited for different contexts. Behind the scenes, each Persona links to an Identity component on the Radix ledger. The Identity allows cryptographically signing “challenges” to prove ownership without revealing personal data.

Upon logging into a site with a Persona, the website can request access to specific data like a mailing address. The wallet will ask the user’s permission before sharing any data. This eliminates websites needing to store user personal information to deliver customized experiences. Users retain control through the wallet to update data or revoke access.

Radix Connect

Radix Connect enables the mobile-centric Radix Wallet to seamlessly interact with dApps on desktop websites. The one-time setup involves installing a Radix Connect browser extension that displays a QR code, which is then scanned by the mobile wallet. This establishes an encrypted peer-to-peer connection between the wallet and browser that uses WebRTC technology, eliminating the need for a centralized server relay. The connection automatically activates when accessing desktop dApps requiring wallet interaction.

For mobile browsers, the wallet utilizes deep linking to directly communicate with dApps rather than Radix Connect.

Native Assets

Native Assets refer to the built-in support for representing resources like tokens, NFTs, badges, and other assets on the Radix network. Configuring Native Asset behavior does not require complex smart contract code. Instead, attributes are specified in the resource definition for each asset. This allows the Radix Wallet to directly access the data and properties of all Native Assets in a user's account and display relevant insights. For example, NFT metadata can be shown in-wallet rather than needing to visit a third party site. The transparency of asset configurations also facilitates visibility of token permissions, such as whether it permits being recalled by the issuer.

Transaction Manifests

Transaction Manifests are a more transparent form of transacting on the Radix network compared to typical transactions. Rather than a hashed message to a smart contract address, Manifests explicitly list asset movements between accounts and dApps that will occur. This allows the Radix Wallet to provide a clear summary of exactly what will happen for a user to review and prevent unexpected outcomes. Transaction Manifests also inherently enable atomic composability between components without special coordination code.

Roadmap

The Radix team uses a roadmap to guide the continuing development of the wallet, structuring it into three main sections - Milestones, Underway, and Backlog. Milestones represent significant research and development efforts expected to take multiple months. The Underway section highlights features currently in active development with developers working on coding them. Finally, the Backlog contains small and medium scale features that will be pulled into upcoming releases.

This combination of longer-term milestone initiatives and incremental feature building aims to progressively enhance the functionality of the wallet while ensuring architectural soundness. The roadmap priorities also balance innovations that improve security, privacy and the user experience. Understanding this structure provides insight into the Radix team's strategy for enabling seamless, secure decentralized experiences for mainstream users via the mobile wallet.

Multi-Factor Account Control & Recovery

One of the most anticipated wallet features is robust multi-factor authentication for enhanced account security. The Radix public ledger already enables complex multi-signature configurations and access control at the protocol layer. However, streamlining these capabilities for easy use through the wallet UI/UX requires significant design considerations.

The multi-factor milestone will allow users to set up and manage additional sign-in requirements per account, such as a hardware security keys or biometric factors. They could also configure advanced recovery methods, like social or custodial account recovery. Behind the scenes, this integrates with the underlying component-based architecture of Radix accounts.

To translate the technical possibilities into an intuitive user experience, substantial work is needed to handle use cases and edge cases around multi-factor setup, modification, recovery initiation, device switching, and more. As such, this milestone initiative encompasses numerous complex flows that the Radix team aims to simplify as much as possible. The end goal is for multi-factor security to feel natural and unobtrusive during typical wallet interactions.

Mobile-to-Mobile dApp Support

While the Radix wallet already enables connecting with desktop-based dApps, allowing direct integration between the mobile wallet and mobile dApps unlocks additional capabilities. Users increasingly access decentralized apps on the go, not just from a computer.

Under this milestone, the team will focus on seamless linking when a user wants to connect their Radix wallet to a dApp on their phone. For example, clicking “Connect Wallet” within a DeFi game app could automatically prompt the user to select accounts and confirm authorization back in the Radix wallet. Behind the scenes, this leverages Android/iOS functionality for deep linking between apps on the same mobile device.

Another motivation for direct mobile-to-mobile connectivity is enabling transactions initiated in a dApp to trigger wallet confirmation in a streamlined manner. This provides a smooth user flow while still ensuring transactions authenticate via the user’s primary wallet rather than granting open-ended permissions to the dApp itself. The Radix team needs to determine optimal technical mechanisms to achieve secure app-to-wallet communication flows on mobile. But the end result will be convenient experiences for accessing decentralized apps directly from your mobile device without extensive switching or sacrificing user security.

Push notifications and Requests

Push notifications are a familiar concept for mobile apps, but their implementation for a decentralized wallet requires some additional considerations. Rather than just broadcasting informational alerts, Radix intends push notifications to enable transaction requests between the wallet, dApps, and even other users.

This ties into the Radix Connect sub-component for transmitting requests across the broader Radix ecosystem. Users may take wallet actions like setting up a transaction in a dApp or through a peer interaction which necessitates confirmation back in their primary wallet. Enabling push requests allows triggering these approvals without constant app switching.

For example, an ecommerce dApp could initialize an order transaction that gets securely pushed to the user’s wallet as a request to sign. Or a friend could request funds with notification instantly prompting the user to open their wallet and process it. The vision is to support notifications, signatures, and UI flows which smooth the user experience without compromising security model fundamentals.

As Radix Connect is further built out to transmit transactions, data, and other signed payloads between parties, reimagining push mechanisms to take advantage of these capacities unlocks entirely new on-the-go blockchain user experiences.

Multiparty Signing

Unlike the single signer model common in crypto, Radix evolved its transaction manifest architecture to enable multi-signature capabilities at the protocol level. This allows formally specifying signatures from multiple parties as a requirement for a valid transaction. For example, a DeFi governance token could mandate confirmations from 2 out of 3 authorized board members.

However, crafting intuitive wallet flows to coordinate the collaborative actions of multiple signers poses daunting UI/UX challenges. Each participant needs to review and ratify their component of a complex collective transaction. This necessitates passing transaction payloads across multiple wallets to accumulate the Threshold of approvals.

Designing smooth experiences for cooperative multi-party transactions encompasses streamlining activities such as partial signing, amending transaction details, establishing required badges, and notarization. At each phase, careful considerations around user roles, account and permission configuration, security guarantees, contingency scenarios, and more play a part as well.

By tackling these intricacies, Radix lays the groundwork for innovations ranging from social payment splitting with friends to formal business decisions requiring board resolutions. The result aims to maintain exceptional ease-of-use regardless implementation complexity underneath.

Sessions / Streaming Mode

Sessions and streaming introduces the concept of bounded wallet permissions to enhance dApp integration. Rather than blanket authorizations, users should be able to intentionally configure conditional account access tied to a particular live session.

For example, signing into a web3 game could trigger carefully scoped permissions allowing the game to transact with certain tokens or NFTs during gameplay. However, these privileges would expire after the session closes rather than persist indefinitely. That way users avoid risky overauthorization yet still enjoy convenient experiences. A major goal is enabling one-time permissions configuration to minimize wallet auth interruptions after starting a game or application. This may leverage planned functionality like smart accounts version two for governing fine-grained component access. The principles of user security and control still apply within a session’s defined parameters.

Altogether, sessions and streaming builds on Radix’s componentized transaction architecture to balance application requirements with purpose-bound authorization windows. The nuanced approach aspires to eliminate custody arrangements or excessive interruptions while using apps needing account interactions.

NFC Scanning

NFC scanning functionality would extend the wallet’s connectivity to external environments like events or retail. With appropriate mass adoption, NFC readers integrated by third parties could request verification of assets directly from someone’s mobile wallet via proximity communication protocols.

For example, gaining entry to a conference could involve scanning your phone to validate tickets rather than showing a QR code. Or a point-of-sale could confirm sufficient funds for a micropayment upon tapping. These demonstrate more embedded, real-world use cases unlocked by NFC capacities.

On a technical level, NFC scanning fits as a new communication interface for the Radix Connect subsystem. It offers another channel for signing or sharing proofs of ownership/account status. This would require handling communication handshakes, transfer mechanisms, UI notifications, and appropriate permissioning.

While further along the roadmap timeline, enabling seamless NFC and external smart device syncs illustrates the expanding Crypto-to-Real-World integrations on Radix’s ambitious horizon. As community developers ideate these innovative bridges, the team keeps pace preparing supportive wallet tooling.