The cryptocurrency market has grown remarkably well in the last few years. Crypto traders are making huge profits on their investments, and it seems that this trend is going to stay for a long time.

The future of crypto trading looks promising; therefore, it’s the right time to invest in developing a crypto wallet for a wide consumer base.

Now, the question is, how do you build an appealing crypto wallet that users will love?

In this blog, we will discuss the essentials of a crypto wallet – why it is needed, the features that must be included in it, and how to develop an incredible crypto wallet.

Let’s start!

What is a Cryptocurrency Wallet?

Just like any other digital wallet, a cryptocurrency wallet helps users store, send and receive cryptocurrency.

It is a piece of software that safely stores cryptocurrencies and keeps track of their transaction (buying, selling, and lending) records. Users can easily download and install a cryptocurrency wallet on their smartphone or any other compatible device.

Here’s how the crypto wallets function:

You need two things to transact in crypto – the first is your wallet address, which is also known as your public key, and the second is your private key.

A public key is something like your bank account number. You can share your bank account number with other people or institutions to send or receive money. Similarly, you can share your public key, which is your wallet’s address, to receive the crypto.

The private key of your crypto wallet can be compared to your bank account password or the PIN to your debit card, which is confidential. You wouldn’t want to share your PIN with just anyone because that would give them direct access to your bank account.

A private key is a password that provides access to your cryptocurrency.

Crypto wallet - public key vs private key

Whenever you want to acquire cryptocurrency, whether through purchasing or receiving it as a gift, you direct your crypto sender to a unique cryptographic address issued by your wallet.

So, the cryptocurrency wallet doesn’t directly hold your crypto coins within your wallet – They live on the blockchain. Since the cryptocurrency is not present in any physical form, the crypto wallet keeps the information related to your public and private keys, which is your ownership stake of the crypto.

With the help of both of these keys, you can send or receive cryptocurrency while keeping your private key completely encrypted.

Types of Crypto Wallets

Depending on what users plan to do with crypto, there are various crypto wallet options that you can launch in the market.

For example, many long-term crypto investors plan to hold onto their wallets for an extended period. That’s why they might choose a wallet that has great security features. On the other hand, users who actively trade cryptocurrencies may look for convenience and speed.

Based on whether the wallet can be connected to the Internet or not, it is categorized into cold and hot crypto wallets.

Cold Wallet

These are the hardware wallets. They store your keys offline on a device that’s not connected to the Internet. Many in-demand cold storage wallets look similar to a USB drive.

At times, paper wallets — with print information about your public and private keys on a sheet of paper — are also used as cold storage.

Many crypto followers see cold storage as the best option for protecting your digital assets. Since they’re offline, these wallets are considered the most difficult type of wallet to hack. But, they can be easily lost or misplaced.

Hot Wallet

These are software-based wallets. They are more user-friendly but a little less secure as compared to cold wallets.

You can access a hot wallet by downloading a software program to your computer desktop, or an app on your smartphone. There are different types of hot wallets, as below:

1. Desktop Wallets

Desktop wallets are meant to be used on a desktop computer or a laptop. They can be accessed from the computer on which they were originally installed.

Desktop wallets are considered secure except in cases of a virus attack on your computer. Some examples of desktop wallets are Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Knots, MultiBit, Armory, and Electrum.

2. Mobile Wallets

Mobile wallets usually have similar features as desktop wallets have. But they make it easy to process payments at physical stores by scanning QR codes with touch-to-pay and NFC (Near Field Communication).

Bitcoin Wallet and Hive Android are some examples of mobile wallets.

3. Web Wallets

Web wallets facilitate effortless access to cryptos from anywhere – any browser or mobile device etc. They function on the cloud. They are very convenient to use because private keys are stored online.

However, sometimes they become vulnerable to hacking attacks as a third party indirectly controls them.

Why is There a Need for Cryptocurrency Wallet Development?

Need for crypto wallet app development

After the phenomenal success of the cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin & Ethereum, more and more people have started investing in cryptocurrencies. In fact, many new cryptocurrencies are emerging in the market from time to time.

While some cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have come up with their own crypto wallets, traders who wish to invest in multiple cryptocurrencies look for crypto wallets that are compatible with many other cryptocurrencies.

Apart from that, crypto wallets have different applications for business use. Businesses can build their own crypto wallets and integrate them with payment and other business solutions.

A mobile cryptocurrency wallet is a widely-used blockchain wallet. Once you download the mobile application on your smartphone, the app can be accessed anywhere, even in physical stores.

Cryptocurrency mobile apps are frequently in demand – companies opt to build them because

  • They are smaller and less complicated in comparison to other wallets.
  • They make transferring digital currencies faster, easier, and more convenient.

Moreover, the crypto transactions with these wallets are anonymous, encrypted, inexpensive, and decentralized.

The transactions via mobile wallets provide the highest security level because users are protected from fraud and data distortion.

How to Create A Cryptocurrency Wallet?

With the right plan in place, you can build a cryptocurrency wallet app that can become widely popular.

Let’s learn how to go about it and develop a crypto application.

1. Understand Blockchain and Cryptos

Blockchain technology plays a vital role in crypto app development.

If you’re looking to build a crypto wallet app, you need to first explore the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain is a promising and revolutionary technology that makes digital currencies (cryptocurrencies) work, just as the Internet makes e-mails possible. As the name suggests, a blockchain is a chain of blocks where the blocks contain digital information (data), and the chain is the cryptographic principle that is used to connect the data blocks. The whole purpose of using it is to allow the sharing of valuable data in a secure way.

2. Use Standard Cryptocurrency Open-source Libraries

Most cryptocurrencies are open source. Therefore, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can use free libraries and tools that are already available such as BitcoinJ SDK or Coinbase SDK.

Coinbase SDK is a cross-platform Java library. It helps developers build a cryptocurrency wallet for both iOS and Android platforms. In addition, this library supports many popular languages like Python, Java, Ruby, etc.

BitcoinJ SDK is easy to use and has detailed documentation. Moreover, BitcoinJ is JVM-compatible and allows working with its languages like C ++, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, etc.

3. Use APIs

Using APIs is a great way to build a feature-rich cryptocurrency wallet app. When you use a distributed ledger API, it’ll allow you to synchronize your crypto wallet with the blockchain ecosystem easily. Here are a few of the most popular APIs you can choose from – Coinbase, Bitcore, SimpleSwap, and Factom.

Using the APIs, your development team can complete the necessary steps in a very short time, thus adding speed to the app development. Moreover,

4. Go Cloud

At this step, you must select the right cloud platforms for your app. You can opt to choose PaaS (Platform-as-a-service) if going in for web application development.

But, for a crypto wallet app development, you must look for a BaaS (Blockchain as a Service) provider and integrate their cloud service into your app. BaaS products are offered by companies like Amazon, Azure, and Microsoft.

Depending on your requirements and demands, you can choose either of them and develop a secure cryptocurrency wallet app.

5. Select the Right Technology Stack

The right technology stack will give your app the needed success.

For example, in case you want to build a web app, you can use Node.js or Angular.js, along with HTML5 and CSS3. This will help you create a scalable crypto web application.

When building a native Android app, you can choose either Java or Kotlin.

And for iOS apps, Swift or Objective-C can be used.

6. Accentuate Security

Security is paramount when you build a cryptocurrency wallet app. That’s why you should ensure that your cryptocurrency app has top-notch security.

You can consider adding extra security layers to the crypto wallet app with 2FA — fingerprint, face ID, and hardware authentication.

The developers must ensure continuous security updates. They must quickly identify the bugs (if any) and other security issues and fix them using the latest technology.

7. Check Out Your Competitors

Well, it goes without saying that you want your crypto wallet app to stand out in the crowd. Therefore it’s important to keep an eye on your competitors. Know what they are doing, and which technologies they have incorporated. You can check out the features to see what unique features you can add to your app.

Remember, you must know what's happening around you if you want to win a competitive edge over others.

8. Begin Your App Development

So, when you’re all set to start with the crypto wallet app development, make sure you do the following:

  • Decide on all the features of your app.
  • Write the application code and integrate it with your database.
  • Design a simple and user-friendly interface.
  • Make sure to conduct extensive testing before the launch of your wallet.

Key Features to Include in Your Crypto Wallet App

Features of crypto wallet app

Your cryptocurrency wallet app must offer enhanced functionality combined with your business logic requirements.

Here are the essential features that you must include in your crypto wallet app.

1. User Authorization

Given the popularity and value of cryptocurrencies, wallet apps are prone to many security attacks.

That’s why it is always best to enhance the user authentication of your crypto wallet app with a two-factor or multi-factor authentication (2FA or MFA). The 2FA or MFA provides an additional layer of security that many conventional non-crypto apps do not offer.

This is done in addition to your username and password to make access to your wallet all the more secure.

2. QR Code Scanner

A QR Code Scanner feature adds speed, convenience, simplicity, and security to your crypto wallet app transactions.

If your crypto wallet app has a QR code scanner integration, it can facilitate automatic scanning of the wallet address and the public keys. As a result, it enhances cryptocurrency transactions with just a single click.

So instead of typing all the long characters of public keys one by one, the app user can scan the QR code, and the information is grabbed through the scanner. It is a safe and secure way to do cryptocurrency transactions.

This feature is preferred because the app users will have to type long wallet address characters in the absence of this feature, making the probability of missing a few characters or typing incorrectly much higher.

3. Multiple Cryptocurrencies

Your wallet must support more than one cryptocurrency.

It is because many different currencies are added time-to-time, and their values keep on changing. So you wouldn't want to keep many other wallets to store your cryptos. Would you?

So your cryptocurrency wallet app must allow you to transact different currencies seamlessly.

4. Paper Wallet Import

Your app must allow its users to scan a paper wallet using the QR code for sending and receiving crypto money.

5. Push Notifications

Push notifications are an essential feature through which your users can always be alerted & notified of crypto transactions. With this feature, the users of your cryptocurrency application will be notified about the price of their digital money, the success, as well as the failure of any transactions, etc.

This feature can ensure that notifications to all transactions on your account are done in real-time.

6. Latest Conversion Rates

No cryptocurrency wallet app is complete without access and calculating transaction fees based on ever-changing conversion rates.

That is because the crypto wallet app allows its user to make money transactions between multiple modes – For example, the same digital currency, different digital currencies, or even between digital and fiat currencies. This will undoubtedly require that they are apprised of the updated currency value in real-time.

7. Blockchain-Based Transactions

The blockchain technology on which your crypto app development should be based is a game-changer. Thanks to it, your users will be able to transfer and receive digital currencies via your crypto application in an entirely tamper-proof and fast manner.

Moreover, they can view their available balance and the entire transaction history. This is because all completed transactions are transmitted to the blockchain network.

8. Managing Familiar Addresses

This feature aims to make the entire transaction process much smoother, faster, and more convenient by providing your users with a mode to manage all frequently-used addresses.

9. Payment Gateways

A payment gateway integrated into your app can facilitate users to buy or sell their digital assets efficiently.

10. Optional Session Logout

This is an excellent feature for the security measures of your app. With this in place, your users, if inactive, will get automatically logged out after a fixed time and will need to re-login if they want to use the app.

Build A Powerful Crypto Wallet App with Imaginovation

All cryptocurrency transactions need a cryptocurrency wallet. It will help users store, gift, exchange, and trade the many different digital currencies like Bitcoin, Ripple, Ether, etc. If you’re looking to develop a crypto wallet app, get in touch with us.

We are an award-winning web and mobile app development company with vast experience in blockchain application development.

Let’s talk.

Author

Michael Georgiou

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a cryptocurrency wallet?
What are the key features of a crypto wallet app?
Can I develop my own crypto wallet?
How do I start a crypto wallet business?
Enterprise IoT Benefits and Use Cases
Mar 22 2024

Enterprise IoT: Benefits, Common Use Cases and Challenges

Easier data collection. Higher productivity. Increased efficiency in asset utilization. These are just a few of the benefits that businesses…

Read more >
Apple Vision Pro Development
Mar 19 2024

Getting Started with Apple Vision Pro Development: A Complete Guide

Released just last month, the Apple Vision Pro was designed with different use cases in mind. The headset, which Apple calls a “spatial…

Read more >
Spatial Computing
Mar 15 2024

What is Spatial Computing and How It Is Redefining Interactivity

Spatial computing is not just a futuristic concept anymore. It’s a cutting-edge technology that is quickly transforming how businesses…

Read more >
View All Posts