We have announced integration and ecosystem partnership with Neo Smart blockchain on 14 Nov and its mainnet coin $NEO and all NEP-5 tokens are now available on SafePal hardware wallet!
On 22 Nov, our CEO, Veronica had an AMA session in Neo Telegram community and answered a series of questions about security, hardware wallet and roadmap of SafePal. Thank you all for coming and we appreciated all these curious and insightful questions.
Here are the essential points of the session:
AMA Session is Live!
Q: What are the advantages of SafePal Wallet against other crypto wallets like Ledger and Trezor? Is SafePal wallet provides any additional features?
A: There are many highlights worth mentioning for this part. I’ll try to make it short:
1)SafePal is built with the advanced security architect
At the bottom level, SafePal S1 is embedded with a true random number generator, a hardware component that is used to make sure your private key is truly ‘random’. Check the difference between true and pseudo number generator here.
Along with that, SafePal S1 adopts a dual-chip architect, with one secure element(SE) for the sole protection of the private key. Around the SE there layouts multi-layer sensors. Once a malicious attack is detected, the chip will start the self-erase mechanism and wipe out all wallet data.
At the UX level, SafePal S1 adopts a QR code communication mechanism, instead of WiFi, Bluetooth, USB or NFC. The device is 100% cold and offline.
2)SafePal is truly easy-to-use
Point 1, it’s mobile. You don’t need to carry around and trade with a laptop. With an S1 and a mobile phone, you are good to go.
Point 2, the UI/UX is built by a product manager with 10 years of experience in software App. We are focusing on improving every detail that might confuse novice users.
Last and most importantly, SafePal can accommodate limitless currencies…Typically you don’t need to stand the limitation of only managing 3 currencies at a time in the wallet. SafePal can bear it all.
3)SafePal is highly cost-effective
SafePal S1 only costs your $39.99. Some might challenge this saying a lower price usually mean weaker security or quality. But that is not necessarily true. If you think of Amazon Echo Dot selling at $24.99 and Google Home Mini at $25, you will soon find out that the stereotype of always relating product quality with the price isn’t 100% true. Being firm believers of blockchain technologies, we contribute all our energy into building a more secure, transparent and accessible product that enables the majority to access our services and blockchain ecosystem. Meanwhile, a reasonable and affordable price point is one of the key factors realizing this potential, thus enabling wider adoption of blockchain technologies in the long run.
Q: How can I regain access to a wallet if it burns out electrically?
A: If the wallet breaks down or gets damaged, your assets are still safe because SafePal S1 supports the recovery mechanism, and you can recover your wallet with the correct mnemonic phrase on another compatible wallet at any time.
Q: What technology is used to protect users’ digital assets from hacking? Have you ever been exposed to hacking? I think security is the most important thing what about you? ( What is the most important thing you are focusing on ?)
A: No, we are not exposed to any attack so far. Security is indeed our cornerstone and we treat it as our lifeline. It will be a long-last focus for SafePal team and we are working closely with the top security team in the industry to keep our technology updated.
Q: What is the future plan to enhance strategy security.
A: Bounty program, code audit are all on our coming next plan. Will expose more details when it’s settled.
Q: What problems does SafePal solve and how robust are you to handle these in terms of speed, security, interoperability, and scalability?
A: 1)Security: Since Bitcoin was born, there are $17billion worth bitcoin went missing or stolen. That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Security has been the heating pain point, impacting people’s confidence in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
2)Easiness: I heard many users complaining about how cumbersome to use a hardware wallet without any technical background knowledge. This should be and will be changed.
3) Costly solution: most of the hardware wallets are selling at a higher price between $79.99-$600. It is important to bring the price down to a reasonable level and make it more accessible to the masses.
4) Among the SafePal team, we have:
– Security experts who were the key members of building the anti-cyber-attack system of Huawei mobile devices, and the senior security architect of Tencent.
– Sophisticated developer who used to be the leading architect of QQ Space, a Tencent social product with MAU over 532 million
– An experienced operational team who has been working on massively adopted platform like QQ and Wechat for 7 years
– Hardware leader who has been working on hardware design and development for over a decade, and successfully launched a hardware product that is now serving nearly one million users across the continents
– QA expert who used to lead the quality control team in Samsung Smartphone Business Group.
These are all the solid foundation we have to really solve the problems existing in this territory.
Q: What are the security measures that you have for SafePal Wallet to make sure that all the assets stored in your wallet are safe and secure? What is the future plan to enhance strategy security?
A: The first and most important measure, is to build the product safely. Enhance security over and over again is our endless goal. Reasonable and useful UI/UX is another focus. We want to warn the user of the dangerous acts when they are using the product.
Secondly, we think it’s also important to teach people ‘how to wisely manage the crypto assets gained from decentralized freedom’. We are endowed with the 100% freedom of managing our assets without the constraints from any third-party, but unfortunately, not everyone is capable of managing their own private key and money. User education is also our focus. Hence we’ve been sharing useful tips and articles on our platform.
Last but not least: work with more experts. We are connecting with many security teams, white hats to testify and share professional know-how in crypto custody.
Q: Hey Veronica! What is it like working in the tech industry, more specifically with blockchain, as a woman?
A: Interesting question. 🙂
I have been working in the IT industry for nearly a decade. It feels familiar with working in the blockchain industry. I feel exciting and inspiring every day after joining this decentralized world because this is a place where you can see…
1)tons of the smartest brain working together to realize a glorious dream,
2)trends always rapidly changing due to the evolution of technology,
3)and a wide flat world that is truly connected by borderless and decentralized blockchains.
My feeling? It is thrilling! Lol. Meanwhile, it doesn’t bring that much of difference of being a woman in this industry, because we can see a lot of outstanding ladies contributing to this territory. Regardless of gender, we are the same type of people chasing the same goal.
Q: Do you have a very strategic plan to work with NEO Blockchain? How does SafePal help improve the security of Neo Blockchain? How does SafePal work, what’s your key features?
A: NEO is among the first blockchains that we worked with since SafePal S1 was launched. I personally admire NEO’s vision of utilizing blockchain technology and digital identities to digitize and automate the management of assets using smart contracts, which I believe will be the future of blockchain technology.
SafePal and NEO share so much vision in common that we established the strategic partnership soon as we got connected. We are honored to safeguard all NEO users to protect their $NEO assets. Along with the partnership, we are launching various reward storms among the communities! More details can be found here.
P.S. I personally also hold $NEO.
We are looking to integrate more advanced features on the NEO blockchain to deepen mutual collaboration. Stay tuned!
Q: SafePal really is one of the fastest-growing hardware wallets, it seems every week a new coin is supported. Is there a hardware or software limit on how many Coins does the SafePal hardware wallet can support?
A: No we don’t see any limitations here. Check further detail to learn about why here:
Q: Is it planned to offer customization of the SafePal hardware wallet in the future? Like engravings or different colors?
A: Yes an engraving option sounds interesting. We are considering adding it to the festival limited edition. But it’s still under discussion. We will surely keep you posted. You are providing very good suggestions, welcome to share more creative thoughts in our community. 🙂
Q: Do you have or maybe you want to implement integration with some stock exchange in mobile App?
Do you support a currency swap?
Is it possible to regulate the fee for sending the currency?
A: Yes. we are doing that already. SafePal supported Binance DEX back in July and coming next there will be more. The core concept is to enable people to manage assets without leaving SafePal. As for token swap, well partially yes because we still think of the best way to implement. Any good tools to recommend? Let us know. 🙂
Q: Scalability, Security and Data Privacy are three important things. How does SafePal plan to overcome these issues?
A: 1. SafePal S1 is a decentralized wallet. We don’t access or store users’ data or private keys.
2. Seamless user experience, relieving security and cost-effectiveness are all important for mass scalability.
Q: Do you intend to introduce both regular and virtual payment cards in the mobile app?
A: If we look further into the future, yes that is one of the possibilities. It might be a little bit too early to talk about this at this time point when we only have a 1% penetration of internet users in the blockchain industry. The current priority would be to gradually increase adoption first.
Q: Where we can use SafePal in the near future?
A: Usage of SafePal in the future:
-Store and manage crypto(Coins/tokens/NFTs/etc)
-Trade and swap your crypto assets
-BUY/SELL crypto
-Pay for daily services using Bitcoin
-Many more.
Q: Each application has a back gate (entrance), how can you guarantee the security of the funds?
A: No we don’t have a back gate in the App.
Q: What are the biggest obstacles to your project when you implement it to the real world, and what is your plan to overcome these problems?
A: The biggest challenge would be the currently low penetration and adoption of blockchain among common people. This is the common challenge all blockchain companies are facing with. I think it takes a long time for the time come when our kids, friends know more about blockchain technology. We need to be patient for this and keep BUIDLing.
Q: What is the long term marketing strategy being implemented by your team?
A: Work closely with strategic partners like NEO in the ecosystem.
Listen to our user demands
Keep BUIDLing
Good product speaks for itself among target users. 🙂
Q: Can you make the updates to be smooth, entering the mnemonic words is a little bit frustrating? Thank you!
A: Thanks for using SafePal and sorry for causing such inconvenience. Do you mind DMing me to see if I can help? Some users did feedback with the update issues. We are trying to improve here.
Besides, we launched a new feature, enabling users to directly use the wallet after an upgrade by only typing the PINcode, rather than the complete mnemonic phrase. Check it out here.
P.S. This feature was also added because some users replied with similar confusion as you did. Maybe you can try upgrading to the latest firmware to see if this is improved.
Q: SafePal support Dapps?
A: Not yet.
Q: What are your future plans for more improvements to the SafePal device?
A: For a concrete future plan of improvements, here are our coming focuses in the coming Q4 and 2020 Q1:
1)Currency support: it’s the basis of accessibility to the masses.
2) Product iteration: We listened carefully and closely to our community feedback. Till now we have added at least 5 new features that are proposed by our core users. The best advice always comes from your users.
3) Various product lines: we heard users asking if we can build customized or different types of products. We are looking into that as well. Users’ demands are always diversified. We want to keep updated with the latest user needs.
P.S. This feature was also added because some users replied with similar confusion as you did. Maybe you can try upgrading to the latest firmware to see if this is improved.
Thank you for your time. We will see you next time.
