Walletbeat FAQ

Walletbeat is an Ethereum wallet rating site.

It aims to provide a trustworthy, up-to-date source of information about the state of the Ethereum wallet ecosystem.

The Ethereum wallet ecosystem today is fragmented and it is difficult for users to find a wallet that meets all of their requirements.

Wallets are not fully interchangeable, so apps need to write wallet-specific code to paper over those differences, or encourage their users towards wallet types that have better UX but do not necessarily reflect Ethereum values nor provide a good way for the user to easily change to a fully self-custodial external wallet.

Wallets themselves are in competition for users and market share, causing competitive pressures that emphasize flashy features over important-yet-often-neglected values like security, privacy, and user self-sovereignty.

Walletbeat aims to provide an objective and fair assessment of Ethereum wallets as they stand. Its purpose is similar to that of L2Beat , but for wallets.

Where L2Beat assesses Layer 2s, Walletbeat assesses wallets. Much like L2Beat has played a major role in pushing the Layer 2 ecosystem towards better security and decentralization over time, Walletbeat aims to push the Ethereum wallet ecosystem towards similar Ethereum-aligned values.

As an Ethereum user, Walletbeat helps you make an informed decision about which wallet to use, and which wallet you may want to fund.

As an Ethereum wallet developer, Walletbeat helps you compare your own wallet against competitors, and a source of inspiration for roadmap items to work on.

Wallets are evaluated on a set of pass-fail rules that evaluate specific attributes.

Attributes are selected based on the following guidelines:

• Ethereum alignment. This is a notoriously fuzzy concept. Walletbeat's interpretation of it centers around cypherpunk values , which Vitalik Buterin's own ideas around desirable wallet attributes are also based on. These values include security, privacy, user self-sovereignty, and permissionless interoperability (via shared standards). These principles are mostly timeless and the attributes in this category should be mostly static.

• Shared Ethereum ecosystem goals. This is a moving target that aims to reflect and accelerate the realization of the goals of the rest of the Ethereum ecosystem. For example, Ethereum's rollup-based scaling roadmap is well-complemented on the wallet side by focus on transparent asset bridging, trustless L2 asset withdrawals, and so on.

• Not already market-forces-driven. Ethereum's wallet ecosystem is already driven by market forces to support certain features like convenient multi-chain management including the most popular L2s, support for popular hardware wallets, and so on. Walletbeat aims to complement existing market forces by focusing on features where market competition alone may not be enough to encourage the ubiquity of a feature across the wallet ecosystem. For example, market forces do not always accurately predict the likelihood of long-tail events like software supply chain security and user data privacy breaches.

Once desirable attributes are identified, the next step is to rate wallets on those attributes based on a set of rules. These rules are selected using the following guidelines:

• Objectively measurable. It should be possible to determine whether a rule is met or not without involving human judgement. For example, a rule that looks at the user data exported to third-party servers can be objectively measured by looking at the wallet's source code or by analyzing the contents of wallet network traffic.

• Technology-neutral. Rules should not prescribe the technology used in an implementation of a specific attribute. For example, an attribute evaluating whether a wallet's source code license is open-source should not prescribe a specific license to use. As another example, an attribute evaluating whether a wallet supports sending assets privately should not prescribe a specific method to send assets privately, and should equally recognize possible solutions such as stealth addresses and Privacy Pools. Notable exceptions to this guideline include ubiquitous EIPs. For example, there may be multiple token standards, but the ubiquity of ERC-20 means that other fungible token standards are not worth supporting as alternatives to ERC-20 in Walletbeat.

• Immediately feasible. It should be possible for a wallet to satisfy an attribute using currently-available technology without requiring a future Ethereum protocol upgrade or new browser features to exist.

• Pragmatic. It should be possible for a wallet to satisfy an attribute without introducing over-burdensome complexity or ruining another aspect of the wallet experience in the process. For example, one way to satisfy an attribute such as "users should be able to submit L1 transactions in a censorship-resistant manner" might be for the wallet to require running a full node, but this would be impractical for many users to run due to the storage and bandwidth requirements involved. For such attributes, while rules should recognize and accept "users may run a full node and connect their wallet to it" as a valid implementation, there should also be other more pragmatic solutions, such as "the wallet rotates between with several public transaction broadcast endpoints in diverse jurisdictions".

• Raising the bar over time. While pragmatism is important and wallets should be able to satisfy an attribute using currently-available technology, said technology will improve over time and rules should be expected to move along with it. For example, while some features may be infeasible to implement in browser-based wallets due to current limitations in browsers' extension capabilities, these capabilities may change over time and rules will be updated accordingly.

Wallets are rated based on various attributes which are grouped under five high-level buckets:

• 🔒 Security attributes measure how secure a wallet is. This includes security features such as hardware wallet support, chain verification, resilience against software supply chain attacks on the wallet's development process, scam warning features, etc.

• 🕵 Privacy attributes look at how well a wallet protects your privacy. This includes features to interact with the Ethereum ecosystem privately such as private transfers, but also how much data the wallet collects about you.

• 🏰 Self-sovereignty attributes determine the control and ownership guarantees the wallet gives you over your account, as opposed to being dependent on third-party providers to act in a trustworthy and reliable manner. This includes the potential for your transactions being censored by third-parties, or your ability to use DeFi protocols and to withdraw funds from Ethereum layer 2 solutions without relying on third-parties.

• 🔍 Transparency attributes determine the degree of public scrutiny and accountability that a wallet's software development process is subject to, and whether that process is sustainable. This ensures that the wallet software is trustworthy and that it will be maintained for the foreseeable future, which is crucial when deciding to rely on a wallet to safeguard your assets and data.

• 🌱 Ecosystem attributes refer to present-day Ethereum ecosystem priorities and transitions that impact the feature set of Ethereum wallets. For example, the transition to and fragmentation caused by many layer 2 solutions in Ethereum requires wallets to adapt by providing easy or seamless ways to move assets across layer 2 chains, or to support Ethereum addresses that contain chain information in them. Note: Unlike other attribute groups, which are mostly timeless principle, the set of 🌱 ecosystem attributes should be expected to change quickly as the Ethereum ecosystem itself evolves.

For more information on the specific attributes within these high-level buckets, refer to these attributes on a wallet-specific page.

Scores are computed as a weighted average of all the criteria that go into assessing wallets.

Each high-level category has its own weighted-average score, and the wallet's final score is a weighted average of those.

For wallets that have multiple versions or run on multiple platforms, scores are computed for each individual version. However, when browsing the Walletbeat homepage without selecting a specific version, Walletbeat aggregates the per-version scores by taking the worst rating on each attribute across versions. This is because the worst rating acts as a "floor" for this attribute for all versions of the wallet. Therefore, no matter which version of this wallet a user chooses, they will be using a wallet that is at least as good as this aggregated rating. This approach also encourages wallet developers to reduce per-version differences and reuse as much code and components as possible.

Walletbeat was originally created by moritz as an open-source effort to document the state of the wallet ecosystem. Multiple contributors have helped along the way by adding data on a variety of wallets.

Walletbeat was later revamped in 2025 by polymutex with a more in-depth focus on Ethereum alignment and richer data about individual wallets. This is still a work in progress.

Walletbeat is currently community run, but was previously hosted by Fluidkey , an incorporated company in Switzerland. In order to maximize credible neutrality, Walletbeat's long-term ownership goal is to become an independent DAO or foundation (similar to L2Beat) once Walletbeat reaches a higher level of maturity and a broader set of regular contributors.

Walletbeat is a work in progress and we would love your help!

The best way to help is to help with wallet research. There are lots of Ethereum wallets put there, and it takes a lot of work to dig through their source code and provide accurate assessments.

If you are a wallet developer, your help here would be invaluable to ensure that Walletbeat's data about your wallet is accurate and up-to-date. Your expertise with your wallet's codebase speeds up this process a lot.

If you would like to help with this, please contribute to our repository! .