Hardware Wallet
A dedicated offline device that stores a wallet's private keys and signs transactions on-device, so the keys never touch an internet-connected computer.
- glossary
A hardware wallet is a small dedicated device — typically with a screen and one or two buttons — that stores a wallet's private keys offline and signs transactions on the device itself, so the keys never touch an internet-connected computer. Common examples include Ledger, Trezor, GridPlus Lattice, and Keystone. Because the signing operation happens inside the device's secure element, malware on a connected laptop cannot extract the key; the worst it can do is trick the user into approving a malicious transaction on the device screen — which is why "verify on device" matters.
Related keywords
- hardware wallet
- cold wallet
- Ledger
- Trezor
- GridPlus
- Keystone
- secure element
- self-custody
Contributors
Namefi is a collective of engineers, designers, and operators who obsess over building tools that make managing your onchain domain names effortless.
Victor Zhou is a technology founder and standards editor focused on digital identity and trust. He founded Namefi, edits Ethereum Improvement Proposals, and previously led smart-contract architecture work at Google Labs.
His work sits at the intersection of naming, ownership, and the systems people use to establish identity online. That perspective makes him especially interested in the way names move between personal meaning, public recognition, and digital infrastructure.
For Namefi, Victor edits and writes about domains as durable digital identity: how names become ownable onchain assets, how tokenization changes custody and trust, and what naming can learn from the systems people use to establish identity online.