great points, i hadn’t thought of bitcoin hardware in this way before.

it does seem likely that the form factors will converge over time, but not sure in which direction.

personally, i think most of these screens are too small for most people to find useful… i wonder if block is leading the next iteration of devices by removing their screen altogether.

The future of hardware wallets will be shaped by the future base chain transactions.

E.g. if base layer usage moves towards more complex multisig, miniscript and the rest then enchanted GUI devices with richer input and greater processing power will be the result.

That looks more like a seedsigner or coldcard q than a trezor, for example. And probably very little like a bitbox.

Of course in parallel, I'd expect to see much more like satscard being used by normies with hosted multisig setups.

The two paths then are feature full maxi hardware and super pared back normie gear.

Good points. We're still too early but I think that standardization is opposite to decentralization. So we'll probably see a lot of different designs and functionalities depending on the final users. Normies, institutions and maxis will have different needs and requirements. Eventually the important is to have your signing keys safe.

Modern cars are boring because a massive number of regulations has accumulated over a long period of time, confining manufacturers to certain designs. It is possible that certain features would have emerged as common, but it's impossible to know. I'm not sure if there are any such regulations in cell phones, but I suspect it to be more market-driven than the auto market.

We are in the halcyon days of bitcoin HW wallets.

Don't forget about the coldcard Q

Never heard this name either. Interesting.

Its hard to say what design will win. Personally for safety and security I think the less somethings screams hardware wallet the better.

If you look at market share, we've already seen a convergence to USB devices that have 2 buttons and small screen (ledger and trezor). The vast majority of users are perfectly happy with that form factor.

But as someone actively working in this industry (at BitBox), I don't think we're in that converging phase just yet. It also depends on how much people are willing to pay for their hardware wallet. If you're limited to a $100 budget, there really isn't a crazy amount of new technology available that will let you build interesting devices.

I believe there's still a lot of room for so much creativity and exploration in the hardware wallet space.

With such a variety it looks like we're still too early.

Maybe op_vault will make these redundant.

Or maybe they will be implemented into our smart phones in a secure way.

Seems like a good point. When I look at the cars and cellphones in the pictures the older models all the look the same too, but with subtle variations. Same for the new models. The old models mostly seem different because they have colours. Maybe it's just me.

The interesting difference here is that "not looking like a HWW" is actually a good thing as it's more discrete. So if HWWs converged on a common design, the outlier would have the advantage as it's less easily recognizable by a thief.

My guess is that we'll see a convergence of common features (air-gapped, cameras, etc.) but the shell that houses these components will be highly subject to change and will cycle in and out of fashion.

Perhaps customers also like adding a bit of flair and mystique to their back-up schemes? This seems more relevant to the steel-backups we have on the market, where there are a bajillion different designs out there and basically all of them are inferior to a simple stamped sheet.

The "era of ferment" is an interesting concept generally speaking, but hardware wallets are not required for sovereign ownership of Bitcoin. In fact, they are a weakness. In my opinion, we will move away from hardware wallets altogether and work exclusively with trusted battle-tested FOSS software wallets such as Electrum and Seedsigner. BIP39 seed phrases will be stamped on stainless steel washers or some other form of durable media and physically secured. I further predict that hardware wallets will get compromised with Gov't/corporate mandated back-doors further eroding trust in all of these devices.

When it comes to hardware wallets, we have to differentiate between those with buttons and a screen and those with just one button (bitcoin maxi only needs one button :)). As for the ones with just a button, I think the jack hardware wallet is close to the ideal design.

I guess real Bitcoiners prefer to make their own instead of using standardized Bitcoin hardware devices 🥸 SAFER and better.

Like clothes, houses, and even life, everything is going standardized, but then I guess Bitcoiners are the remaining hope to bring some beauty and uniqueness into this world.

I don't know which design will win in the end, but it's clear to me that the standardization of hardware wallets hasn't arrived yet, that model will come.

I am not sure I buy this concept.

For the American cars, the image on the left shows cars in many different colors at various angles. On the right, all cars are white and shown at identical angles. It also only includes cars of a certain category. Throw in a mini cooper, VW bus, or a Porsche and things look different. The inside of cars is drastically changing with electric vehicles and endless sensors and software.

Phones are interesting because they used to be just phones, and now they are computers (that we sometimes use to make calls). The screen took over. The most experimental stuff might be foldable screens and new ideas like the Rabbit R1(which might not even be a phone anymore). Cars are still cars, but phones are not just phones anymore (of course you can argue differently here).

As for hardware wallets, I hope we get to keep diversity and different types of devices with their own personalities and optimizations for different use cases. A DIY seed signer relies on cheap parts that can somewhat easily be put together by hobbyists. Quite different from a Bitkey. I like how different they feel as well. Since they are much simpler than cars and phones, maybe that will persist, like we have a ton of different alarm clocks, toasters, speakers, and other smaller electronic devices? Overall, I hope that people continue to feel that bitcoin is something special, and maybe they will then also want well-crafted devices that reflect that.

Or maybe, if software eats the world, we won't need them anymore, and every device we have will be a key - multisig making up for each individual key being less secure? We'll see.

@Design_r tried to move this to the new Design tab once I noticed but was too late 😭