Building a Crypto Wallet: Technologies And Issues
As the market grows, a crypto wallet can bring stable income and expand the functionality of an existing crypto service. Let’s review the technology stack underlying cryptocurrency wallets, the problems that their creators face, and the ways to drastically facilitate the process of wallet development.
Building a Crypto Wallet: Basic Requirements and Technologies
Whether you build a cryptocurrency wallet completely from scratch or with some ready-made solutions, here are the basic things you need to ensure:
- The wallet synchronizes with the blockchain and has permissions for outgoing and incoming transactions.
- It generates addresses and recognizes transactions sent to these addresses.
- The wallet shows the history of the transactions.
- It calculates transaction fees dynamically based on the market situation.
A blockchain development can start from setting up dedicated nodes for each cryptocurrency that you want your wallet to support. For Bitcoin, devs use Bitcoin Core's RPC or the C# Bitcoin Full Node – they are trustless and ensure high network level privacy.
However, running a node, and especially multiple ones, demands great resources and a qualified team of blockchain developers. Nodes have high storage, bandwidth, CPU and time requirements. That’s why many crypto wallet creators use pre-existing solutions such as SDKs that are well-compatible with the wallet app and can process transactions.
One example of such a tool is the BitcoinJ SDK. This is a cross-platform Java library that supports Android and Windows, it can be used with all Java Virtual Machine-compatible (JVM) languages such as Java, Python, Ruby, C++, JavaScript. It interacts with the Bitcoin testnet and mainnet, allowing making BTC transactions.
Compared to a Bitcoin node, BitcoinJ is very lightweight: thanks to the simplified payment verification (SPV) mode, it only downloads a small portion of Bitcoin blocks, which lets it operate on memory-restricted devices such as cell phones.
Other tools that facilitate crypto wallet development are the Coinbase SDK and the Blockchain.com API. They provide the means to build a wallet based on some existing solutions, yet still require a lot of work before your wallet is ready to use.
Mobile wallets
There is a set of programming languages commonly used for mobile crypto wallet development. The choice primarily depends on the operating system you’re building for.
- Java or Kotlin are used if you build on Android. Many devs are familiar with Java, which facilitates the hiring and development processes. Kotlin is new and officially preferred by Google.
- Objective-C or Swift are used in iOS development. The former is a renowned language, but it’s closed-source. The latter is a new open-source language created by Apple for developers, and it is quite easy to learn it.
- Flutter is an SDK from Google that works on Dart, a flexible programming language that can be used for building on Android, iOS, Windows, and Linux. Flutter SDK is created for developing cross-platform wallet applications.
- React Native, based on React.js, is a JavaScript library designed to build user interfaces including crypto wallets. About 70% of devs are familiar with it. React Native uses basic components of Android or iOS.
What Features Should a Crypto Wallet Have?
We’ve already mentioned some basic features essential for any crypto wallet. If you want to create a solution that your users will enjoy, here’s the extended list of the functionality that a good wallet has.
User profile
This is the general outline that integrates all parts of the wallet in a whole and allows users to navigate it intuitively. It displays the crypto portfolio with coins’ value, transaction history, settings for security and notifications, backup options, exchange features, and so on.
Security
Security should be the main focus of any crypto wallet. Besides the technical solutions to protect funds, wallets should give users the means to protect themselves as well. This includes a seed phrase, and the wallet should double-check if the user has written it down correctly. The authorization should include PIN code, FaceID, and 2FA options.
Multi-currency support
The more coins you support, the more flexible the wallet is for your users, and the wider audiences you can reach. Today’s most commonly used wallets support hundreds of assets.
Built-in crypto swaps
Crypto exchanges in the app allow users to save their time as they don’t have to go anywhere else to swap their coins. For a business, exchange fees will be the primary source of income that the wallet generates. Fiat purchases and withdrawals are a good addition to the crypto swap feature.
Usability features
The devil’s in details, so by adding small but useful features, you can drastically increase your customers' loyalty. These include:
- A QR code scanner facilitates making crypto payments as no data has to be entered manually to set up a transaction.
- Manual fee adjustment gives freedom in defining whether a customer wants to accelerate the coin transfer.
- Push notifications let customers know when a transaction is completed.
- Crypto price charts in the wallet may be enough to avoid visiting CoinMarketCap or other price trackers.
The Cost of Building a Crypto Wallet
- The estimated cost of developing a crypto wallet is about $80-100K at best. This includes devs’ salaries, technologies, node requirements, and so on. Note that once your wallet is completed, you will need to maintain and improve it, which increases the incurred costs.
- The wallet development can take months. It will depend on what methods you use and the size of your team, but it will definitely take months or up to a year or more.
- A qualified team of blockchain and app development specialists is required. To build a robust crypto storage solution, you will need frontend and backend devs, blockchain specialists, UX/UI testers, QA engineers, and market managers.
Issues That One Faces While Building a Crypto Wallet
- Managing a blockchain node. The basic crypto wallet’s feature is to properly sync with the blockchain – without this, all other features don’t matter. Maintaining a proper connection with the node is of utmost importance and has to be executed 24/7, while it’s not always easy to keep it stable.
- Tracking market data. Your wallet needs to always be aware of current market prices to display coins’ value correctly and ensure fair exchange rates. You have to deal with the possible lags to keep this system operating.
- Managing the dev team. A wallet development team includes from a few to a few dozen engineers, each with their own ambitions and needs. Leading such a team during a long period requires quite a bit of endurance.
- High costs. We’ve considered some costs in the previous paragraph, and for many of those willing to build a wallet, they are well above the limit.
- Keeping track of network updates. All blockchains keep evolving, and the wallet needs to stay updated on all changes. In multi-currency wallets that support dozens of networks, this is not easy.
How Do I Facilitate a Crypto Wallet Development?
Building a crypto wallet costs at least a hundred thousand dollars and months of hard work. Is there a way to launch your crypto wallet faster without such significant investment?
White Label Crypto Wallet by ChangeNOW allows you to launch a monetized non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet under your brand in mere days or weeks. Here’s how it works: we provide you with a ready-made wallet solution, you add your design and some adjustments by request, and your wallet is ready for launch.
Perks of using a While Label Wallet
- You reduce development costs. Instead of building a wallet from scratch, you receive a ready-to-use solution. This can save you up to a few hundred thousand USD.
- You can monetize your wallet. We have a built-in crypto exchange tool, and whenever a user swaps crypto or buys/sells it for fiat, you receive revenue from each transaction. You determine the percentage: it goes at 0.4% from each swap by default, but you can change this at any moment.
- Our White Label solution allows building a wallet that the users enjoy. It supports over 1000+ assets, has a crypto swap widget, NFT storage, and staking features.
- We take care of technical maintenance and market updates. We will help you set up the wallet, our support and personal managers will be ready to assist you 24/7 once the wallet is launched. Your wallet will receive all market data without interruption, and all technical maintenance, including network updates, is our responsibility.
- Our White Label wallet has never experienced hacks or any other security issues. Safety of funds and data is our #1 priority, so we invest a lot in experts and technical solutions that provide it. Rest assured your business and customers are protected.
If you feel like we can be of service to you with the While Label wallet solution, feel free to contact us to learn more.
In case you want to build a crypto wallet yourself but need assistance with a built-in crypto and fiat exchange tools, we got you covered as well! With ChangeNOW Exchange API, you can monetize your wallet with a flexible profit system and 24/7 support.
Building a crypto wallet requires great intellectual, human, and financial resources, and only the bravest take this path. By using ready-made SDKs or ChangeNOW White Label wallet, you can significantly reduce costs of development. But whatever tools you choose, ChangeNOW wishes you great experience while building your crypto wallet!
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