Hey everyone,
I'm Alekos Filini from TwentyTwo Devices, I'll be doing an AMA for the next hour.
If you don't know me, I'm a software engineer who's been working on Bitcoin for the past few years: I've been at a few companies in the past, including Blockstream, then moved on to create a wallet library called BDK which I maintained for a few years.
Now I'm launching a new company called TwentyTwo to build hardware devices for bitcoiners: our first product is called Portal, it's a new kind of hardware wallet optimized for use with smartphones, and is now available for pre-orders.
Happy to answer any question you may have!
Will your product work with nunchuk iOS?
While the price point of $100 is a bit high for mass market appeal I think this can compete with the satscard by coinkite.
Potato chips or pretzels?
Yes, we are speaking with Nunchuk to integrate it!
Yes the price point is a bit higher than the Satscard (although also a lot lower than many other hardware wallets), but since it's an on-chain wallet I think it's reasonable considering it will be used to secure multiple tens of thousands of dollars.
100% potato chips
And hopefully easy recovery in case of a loss. With satscard the recovery seems confusing
You mean the TAPSIGNER I believe, not the SATSCARD.
Yes correct Tapsigner!!
Whats your story behind naming your company TwentyTwo?
We were trying to find a name that would be somehow related to the technical functioning of the device (you know, nerds...)
We started from the frequency at which NFC operates, which is 13.56 MHz, but thirteen-fifty-six was a bit too long. So then we did the inverse (which is the wavelength) and it turned out to be around 22 meters.
22 is also 21 + 1, which is kind of cool and on top of this there's also a personal reason which makes 22 a special number for me.
So we just decided to go with it
what are your hobbies?
In general I spend my time building/hacking on anything, whether it's software, electronics, physical things (I like to design stuff and 3D print them!), I even like chemistry and I enjoy watching YouTube chemistry videos.
I also enjoy walking/hiking, I try to walk at least one hour every day (living in a beautiful Italian city helps with that)
Check out Applied Science and Extractions&Ire on YouTube, bet you like them
Oh yeah, I'm a big fan of both! Loved the cubane series ahahah
Lately one of my favorite channels is Hyperspace Pirate, it's kind of a smaller one but he makes awesome content
A man of culture, I see haha 😂
why make a device that is not supposed to be portable but is also assumed to be used with a phone?
Because most people nowadays only have smartphones, and even when they do have laptops they tend to feel more comfortable with mobile devices.
I do this myself too, if I'm at home sitting on the couch I'll just take use my phone to watch a YouTube video or check
TwitterStackerNews.We wanted to build something that would be more comfortable and more accessible to non-technical people, and we believe smartphones are the way to achieve that.
the benefit of a phone over something like a laptop is the increased portability. you'd think a hardware wallet embracing the phone as a medium of interaction with the broader btc network would also embrace this portability.
i understand your point. i just think it's a missed opportunity to make it easily portable because honestly the device looks cool as hell. i'd love to take it with me places and show it off to people. but if it's gonna accidentally break when i'm out and about, then i'd rather not risk it.
On one hand I agree that it would be better if it was more portable, on the other I think it's probably better if people don't walk around with their life savings in their pocket. For that reason portability definitely wasn't one of the priorities for the first version, we think the device as it is now is already useful for the vast majority of users.
That said, we will definitely improve at least the durability, maybe also change the shape/size in the next version (a few years down the line, we just have a bunch of ideas now but we are focused on shipping V1 first).
The benefit of a phone over a laptop for many people is that they only own a phone.
Also, phone's are far less likely to be infected by malware than a laptop.
Will a backup consists of a BIP39 seed? Aside from the missing screen that is the other major drawback of the TAPSIGNER. And if yes, will it be possible to restore a seed to a new device?
Yes, the backup is a standard BIP39 mnemonic.
And yes you can restore an existing mnemonic on a new Portal, or in any other hardware/software wallet since it's just a standard format.
Perfect, that is great.
The hardware wallet market is already quite competitive. What makes your product stand out from the rest?
I think our device is quite unique because it maintains the same security model of "traditional" hardware wallets, while bringing the convenience of using it natively with a smartphone.
It's true that there are many other devices on the market, but most of them can't do what we do. The closest competitors, the other "mobile-native" devices, lack a display, so they are not as secure as Portal because the user can't double check address and amount before confirm a transaction.
thanks
Do you intend to do anything special with multisig? I feel like there's an opportunity for automation of multisig when a threshold of devices are present.
I think the ideal UX for a sovereign setup is: all these signers are nearby and it creates a multisig wallet among them magically and can sign when a threshold is near.
That will mostly be up to the wallets which integrate Portal: our device is built with BDK, so we can support singlesig, multisig and complex descriptors (although some functionalities are not yet exposed in the firmware).
The apps can then build whatever user experience they want on it, taking advantage of the features we expose.
Unfortunately we can't replicate a UX similar to FrostSnap because only one device can be powered at a time.
Do you plan to ever launch a mobile or desktop wallet?
Maybe a mobile wallet later on, but at the moment we just want to focus on the hardware
I'm pretty sure whomever makes a hardware wallet that isn't above a 100 is going to win the great wallet war. Do you have offerings at that price point?
Our device is priced at 89.00 EUR, which is around 95-99 USD at the moment
Then I'd say as long as the device is solid, you are likely to experience success! My hardware wallet budget is a USB stick stashed in a safe somewhere offline at present.
The Blockstream Jade wallet is already under this price point (USD/EUR)
Any timeline on the pre-order?
We are bootstraping the production right now, we think we'll be ready to ship in the summer. We are committed to shipping within Q3, but we may be able to beat that
does this mean you’re going to have other products down the line?
curious to know what other kinds of product ideas are on your mind
Yes!
We have lots of ideas, but they will have to come at the right time. I want to revisit the lightning card for example, but right now it's too early: people don't perceive the value of the added security because lightning is still for pocket change.
Once on-chain fees go up and drive users to other scaling layers we will work on security devices for these solutions as well.
Congratulations @afilini on the release of Portal. I enjoyed watching your product announcement at Bitcoin Atlantis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRAM6bwS8mU&t=31093s
The Bitcoin hardware wallet (signing devices) space needs more innovation and more competition.
I see huge potential for Portal.
I look forward to a future collaboration with a company known for design aesthetics, like https://intl.nothing.tech
https://intl.nothing.tech/cdn/shop/files/ear-stick-03_b5f7f1fd-ec59-4e8f-91ae-c2652c2d8f9c_2792x.jpg
Thanks! We'll see, we have lots of ideas for the next version :)
How was your experience at blockstream?
Did you work with Adam back?
I think the job was very interesting but ultimately it wasn't for me, I was not completely satisfied and so I decided to leave.
I did not work side-to-side with Adam but we spoke a few times. I'm not completely sure about this but I may have been the first person demo-ing him a Jade signing a transaction with Green
Nice!
Thanks for sharing
Cool, thanks for contributing to the space! How are you making on boarding easy for non technical people?
On the hardware side there are no options or menus, it'll just show the mnemonic and you write it down. Obviously the user will need help understanding what's going on, and this will be provided by the app on the phone. But in general we are trying to minimize options/choices as much as possible, we just guide the user through the process without asking too many technical questions
As you said, your device will have screen so tell us what type of screen you are going to use? Also tell if the screen has some apps pre-installed? Will it gey a good camera like Sony or Samsung one?
It's a 0.96" monochrome OLED display.
There's no concept of apps on our device because it's bitcoin only. It's not like Ledger on which you install different app based on the coin you want to use.
I don't understand what you mean with the camera question, can you rephrase it please?
Do you have some specific promotional offers to compete this overbrimming market for Hardware wallet Devices? Would you offer a discount to SNers here?
That's a good idea, here's a 10% discount code for you guys: https://store.twenty-two.xyz/discount/STACKERNEWS
Valid for the next 24h
Was great to meet you and John in the backstage of the pitch day!
Do you use nostr?
I don't unfortunately, I tried it at the beginning and it wasn't working very well so I kind of gave up. I should try it again, I'm sure it's improved a lot over time
Works pretty well now, just be sure to follow many people to get some content in your TL
Why did you call it Portal?
Which will be the second product?
We called it Portal because it sounds cool. I was talking about it with some friends and one mentioned that the hole made it look like a Portal out of a sci-fi movie, and the name stuck.
Nothing specific planned yet, we just have a bunch of ideas to develop.. we will also make decisions based on user feedback on this first version
It sounds cool!
who is one Bitcoiner you'd like to see host an AMA on Stacker News?
Have you ever had Giacomo Zucco here? I think he would have a lot of interesting things to say!
coke or pepsi?
I don't love sugary drinks (although I like them more than alcoholic drinks), but if I had to choose I would probably pick Pepsi
What is one Bitcoin belief you have that most other Bitcoiners would disagree with?
I don't think I have any particularly weird beliefs, but the thing that probably makes me stand out a bit from most other developers or people working in the industry is my lack of interest for all the "new cool tech".
It's not that I think it won't work, far from it, but I just like to focus on more tangible things, stuff that can be built today.
This means I'm completely out of the loop on all the covenants, ark, bitvm, simplicity, whatever discussion. People ask my opinion about them and I just don't have one 🤷♂️
welcome to SN!
where did you first get the idea of building Portal?
I was initially trying to build a better version of the famous NFC lightning cards - I wanted to add a display so that the user could confirm how much they are paying.
I built that thing and showed it to a bunch of people, and I got pretty negative feedback about it: nowadays lightning is still mostly used for smaller payments, so people want the most convenience, not the most security.
So i ended up repurposing the hardware for a different use-case, on-chain transactions, where security is even more critical.
interesting.
do you view Portal as being more or less secure than existing hardware wallets that aren’t designed to be mobile-first?
I think it's comparable to more "traditional" hardware wallets: the chip we use is very similar to the one used by Trezor, so we have a very similar security model.
On top of that our device doesn't have a battery so it's completely offline when not in use. And we use NFC, which is a very simple stack with pretty low attack surface, so compared to other mobile-compatible devices based on Bluetooth we should have a security advantage, at least on paper.
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