Bitcoin.org: Need way to compare wallets

[crwatkins]

We present a fairly good selection of wallets to choose from, but little guidance on the process of selecting a wallet. I suspect most users play whac-a-mole on the wallet listings going from wallet to wallet trying to differentiate them by reading our fairly accurate descriptions ("scoring"). As I (and others) have written in other issues and PRs I would like improve this situation in three stages:

1. Expose existing wallet scoring information in a format that is easier make comparisons
2. Add a "Good for new users" badge for wallets that are best for first time users
3. Add a feature/capability chart for wallets (e.g. multisig, segwit, bech32, lightning, etc.)

I've opened this issue to discuss the first item; the other two will be the subject of subsequent issues and PRs. We've already had a fair amount of discussion in another issue that I originally opened almost a year ago to discuss specific bugs related to the wallet page redesign. I would like to move that discussion here to focus on this one issue with a title that is much more obvious to interested parties.

Background on existing scoring

Wallets are "scored" on six categories, one of which is privacy. Privacy has three subcategories which are similarly scored. The privacy score is manually (not in code) determined by the algorithm on the wallet criteria page based on the three privacy subcategory scores. Scores are not numbers, but rather are text labels which refer to two or more text descriptions of that category. Wallets are scored by choosing the text (and thus the label) that most accurately describes the wallet. All labels begin with the characters "check" followed by one of the four following sets of characters:

• good
• pass
• fail
• neutral

Currently on bitcoin.org, we indicate "fail" with an orange ball beside the text explaining the score while the other three ("good", "pass", and "neutral") are indicated with a green ball.

Proposal

My proposal is that we expose our existing scoring in a way that is easy for users to consume and compare. Except as I explained above, we don't currently expose the good/pass/fail/neutral levels. I further propose that we expose this visually.

Solicitation

I'm looking for ideas on how to be express this. Previously, @harding has suggested using Harvey Balls to augment potential color presentation of these levels, for example

              | Control | Validation | Transparency | Environment | Privacy | Fees
   Foo Wallet |    ●    |      ◕     |       ◔      |     ◔       |  ● ◕ ◔  |   ◕

In the past we've discussed a chart of all wallets, and we've also discussed adding these visual scores to the wallet icons on the selection pages. Some examples can be found by wading through the previous issue.

My Position

After considering this for almost a year now, my position is

1. I would currently prefer a single page chart of scoring that puts the information as close together as possible to facilitate visual comparison. However I'm still looking for another good idea that will surprise me.
2. I'm opposed to generating any new ratings or scoring or description in the context of this issue. This issue attempts to expedite the disclosure of our existing information to users, not create new information.
3. We should not attempt to automate the selection process for the user with sorting, ranking, or numerical scoring. I don't believe that the granularity of our scoring nor the distribution of scores lends itself to that nor do I want to presume too much about the goals of the user. An obsolete chart of distribution can be seen here.
4. The current good/pass/fail rankings are far from perfect, but we already have them, and we have tacit agreement on them, and as time goes on, I become more impressed at how well they were chosen. I'm hoping that we won't need to use those actual words, but rather express them visually.

[maxwellmons]

Hello @crwatkins, can you reopen and rename #2347 to the title of this issue?

People spent lots amount of time working together on #2347 to improve the wallet pages and you've closed it without asking anyone. It included different ideas about better ways to compare wallets.

This new issue essentially starts the conversation over without anybody else's ideas present.

[crwatkins]

@maxwellmons Thanks for your input but in a word no. I opened that issue to fix some bugs and those bugs are now fixed so it is appropriate to close it. You are welcome and encouraged to open your own issues and comment on any issues you like, even closed issues.

[wbnns]

Catching this issue up with current status and progress:

• Summary of initial meeting to review current wallet interface and next steps
• Rough drafts / wire frames following meeting
• Initial feedback on rough drafts / wire frames

We are having progress meetings each Friday at 3PM UTC and can use this thread to communicate each week in the interim. All are welcome to contribute and share their feedback.

@natiwa is currently standing by until Friday so that anyone who would like to add feedback and share ideas has a chance to do so. On Friday we will review feedback that has accumulated and discuss next steps before further revising the different draft wireframes.

Cc: @natiwa, @Cobra-Bitcoin, @maxwellmons, @crwatkins

[natiwa]

@wbnns I will refer to this on Friday before our meeting.

[wbnns]

@natiwa Ok, thanks.

[wbnns]

@crwatkins Hey, a couple of questions before the meeting later this week:

Add a "Good for new users" badge for wallets that are best for first time users

As the wallet maintainer, which wallets do you recommend for this?

Add a feature/capability chart for wallets (e.g. multisig, segwit, bech32, lightning, etc.)

Could you please confirm a list of features/capabilities you recommend to appear in a chart?

[crwatkins]

@wbnns Thanks for asking! As I mentioned above

I've opened this issue to discuss the first item; the other two will be the subject of subsequent issues and PRs.

I didn't expect items 2 and 3 to be tackled right now because of the amount work that might be required. I had hoped to open separate issues for each of those and invite discussion and input from the community. I hope I will be pleasantly surprised, but I suspect it will actually be difficult to arrive at consensus on what wallets are good for first timers, let alone the criteria. It's easy for me to give a small list that might qualify, but everyone has their own favorite and may be insulted that it is not on the list. That said, I recently performed such an exercise and have five quasi-criteria (some of which are extremely subjective and thus hard to explain) which I used to determine my own list. Since you asked:

• Bitcoin Wallet
• BRD
• BitPay
• Electrum
• GreenAddress

My example list of features/capabilities from above (multisig, segwit, bech32, lightning) plus hardware wallet support, full node support, and coin shuffling, might be good to start with. We should solicit input on other suggestions.

[wbnns]

@crwatkins

Ok, understood, thanks. Do you have any other thoughts or feedback on the new work that @natiwa and team have done so far that we can review at the meeting tomorrow?

[crwatkins]

Thanks @natiwa. I think @wbnns has a lot of good comments on the new designs. I'll throw out a few random thoughts and things to keep in mind.

First, as I've mentioned before, I'm not sure we have to provide active filters to filter scores. That said, if they are done right and the actual filters are optional (as I think they are in all three designs), I don't think there is much downside (I'll mention potential downsides below). However, I think it is important to keep in mind that we have no OS category with a dozen (or more) wallets in it. We probably should anticipate some growth, but the number of listed wallets has remained surprisingly stable over the last four years. That said, I think we could avoid having to implement score filters if we wanted to and simply provide a visual comparison of the less than a dozen wallets selected. It could make our work a lot simpler and potentially end up with a simpler and easier to understand UX.

@wbnns pointed out some challenges. I'll just mention a few, more as things to think about rather than a comprehensive list of issues to be addressed.

1. I'm not sure how we are going to adequately describe our score categories to users, particularly new users if we do have an active filter interface.

The only thing I've been able to come up with is a big long list of phrases to choose from. For example:

Which best describes the wallet you are looking for?

• This wallet is a full node that validates and relays transactions on the Bitcoin network. This means no trust in a third party is required when verifying payments. Full nodes provide the highest level of security and are essential to protecting the network. However, they require more space, bandwidth, and a longer initial synchronization time.
• This wallet requires you to install full node software that validates and relays transactions on the Bitcoin network. This means no trust in a third party is required when verifying payments. Full nodes provide the highest level of security and are essential to protecting the network. However, they require more space, bandwidth, and a longer initial synchronization time.
• This wallet uses SPV and the Bitcoin network. This means very little trust in third parties is required when verifying payments. However, it is not as secure as a full node like Bitcoin Core.
• This wallet uses SPV and random servers from a list. This means little trust in third parties is required when verifying payments. However, it is not as secure as a full node like Bitcoin Core.
• This wallet connects to a random server from a list. This means some trust in third parties is required when verifying payments. However, it is not as secure as a full node like Bitcoin Core.
• This wallet relies on a centralized service by default. This means a third party must be trusted to not hide or simulate payments.

It would be accurate but not very reasonable.

1. I also think there may be some filtering that would create awkward results. For example if you said environment is important, but you are looking for a desktop wallet, will we provide no results? (they all "fail")

2. Also be aware that two categories do not have any "good" entries.

3. Likewise many of the categories don't apply ("neutral") to hardware wallets.

4. I'm afraid that the term "fail" is wrong. While we think of the category as fail, we still list the wallet, so in that regard, it's not really a fail. Perhaps if we need a word to expose to describe that category. It might be "poor".

[wbnns]

@crwatkins Thanks a bunch for putting this feedback together.

[natiwa]

At first thanks @crwatkins and @wbnns for the great feedback.

I have a New idea. The flow can be as follow:

1. User click “Choose your wallet” button on the home page
2. The page “Choose your wallet” appears with the “wizard” and a “skip a wizard” options
3. If he chooses the “wizard” option: User step by step select options and answers to questions about:
4. Operating system (we can present a pros and cons of each OS)
5. Level of advancement
6. Needs and preferences
7. A user will get the result based on the selected criteria,
8. If user click “skip wizard” option he will be directly moved to the page with options/ filters on the left and all wallets preview

---------> Let me prepare the wireframe of the wizard flow. That would probably explain a lot and make things way more clear.

@wbnns Answering your questions:

1. As I mentioned, we can have the “I’m an Advanced user” selected by default, and we can know by code what type of an operating system user has.
   
2. The order should be alphabetical in my opinion. I think only wallets that have a "good" result of our selected criteria should be displayed. As an example: If I selected "privacy" and "control" I will see only wallets that have Good Privacy and Good Control. If I do not select any criteria I will see all the wallets.
   
   
   
   1. I did it on purpose. I was thinking that a new user has no idea about those criteria, but now I know that we should have them by better described for the new users. Please see the NEW FLOW at the top of my message.
   
   
   2. I thought we shouldn't show more that one wallet for a new user. More than one would be a paradox of choice for them. That's why I put "We highly recommend..." and show one wallet. Now I think "new flow" and the wizard will change everything.
   
   
   3. I agree. But doesn't "fail" a bad thing?
   
   

@crwatkins Answering your questions:

1. Then we should inform the user about the result and explain what does it mean and why is it.
2. Which categories?
3. Ok. What we should do in that case?
4. We can, of course, figure out the correct naming any time.

All the best,
Natalia

[natiwa]

I'm afraid the google calendar again confused something with time zones. In my google calendar, I have an invitation to a 4 pm CET, not 3 pm CET. Anyway, I'm right now.

[wbnns]

@natiwa Hello, apologies if there was some confusion. It is scheduled for 3PM UTC, which is 4PM CET. Are you still available at that time? Alternatively, if more convenient, we can reschedule to Monday, and review the new idea you mentioned in the interim.

[natiwa]

Yes, that would be actually great. I will have new wireframe ready by then. Can we reschedule it once on Monday? Does 3 PM CET works for you?

[wbnns]

@natiwa Ok, sure. Will look forward to connecting on Monday at 3PM CET (2PM UTC).

[natiwa]

@wbnns Thank you, talk to you then and have a great weekend.

[crwatkins]

@natiwa To answer your category questions above, you can refer to the chart that I did about a year ago. Some wallets have come and gone and maybe a score has changed, but I'm not sure that matters as it still gives us an idea of what the distributions look like.

[natiwa]

Hello all,

Please find the new idea here: Clickable mockup
An alternative version of the Harvey balls : Link
When user click skip helper he will see all wallets: Link

See you on the call.

[Cobra-Bitcoin]

I really like that new idea. By default the UI could assume the user is a beginner, since most visitors to that page are, and have the checkboxes pre-selected to match their needs. This means some wallets will have some natural advantage, but I really think newbies should be spared from accidentally ending up using a wallet like Wasabi or Eclair which won't work well for them.

I think with the ordering we shouldn't have it be alphabetical, we can either have it randomly ordered or add a new score to each wallet, something like a confidence score which represents our confidence in a wallet relative to other wallets. But I prefer random.

[crwatkins]

But I prefer random.

I prefer random. I think the alternative would be way too hard to arrive at consensus on and and to generate new scores, and of course, I tend to prefer the lazier simple route.

[crwatkins]

My following comments apply to the Hardware Wallet section (only).

I'm wondering if we should treat hardware wallets differently than the other wallets in regards to displaying and filtering since they are so different. Currently, our hardware wallets

• All have a score of neutral ("not a score") for Validation, Fees, Privacy, nor the Privacy sub-categories
• All have the same scores for Control (because they are hardware wallets)
• All have the same scores for Environment (because they are hardware)
• The only score that differentiates hardware wallets is Transparency

Much of this stems from the fact that our hardware wallets are not full wallet environments, but perhaps more accurately described as signing engines. A user currently is not going to choose a hardware wallet without a companion software wallet, so some of the categories don't make sense. I think we can

1. Continue as before and treat them the same as before marking some scoring as neutral
2. Continue as before, but remove the score (and filter) from some categories (and not display the category)
3. Treat them as a separate group

I'm leaning toward 3 because because I can't use a hardware wallet standalone; I need a hardware wallet plus a software wallet. It may be just too awkward to continue to treat them the same.

Thoughts?

[wbnns]

@natiwa Thank you all for getting together on Monday to discuss the latest progress. Can you also please do a version/flow where the user does the following:

1. Starts off the flow by being presented with a page where they identify themself as a new or experienced bitcoin user.
2. If new, the user would then go to a page that is structured similarly to the You Need to Know page, where the different wallet criteria are explained, followed by
3. A page where the user selects what wallet environment he/she would like (i.e. web, mobile, desktop, hardware), followed by
4. A table of wallets for that environment along with the scoring criteria/colored dots

If the user indicated that he/she was an experienced user in step 1 above, step 2 would be skipped and he/she would go directly to step 3.

@crwatkins @Cobra-Bitcoin Ok, we will plan to randomize the table.

@crwatkins Regarding the hardware wallets, we can also do a couple wireframes to see what that might look like, too, as we get some options for these new flows mocked up.

[natiwa]

Hey, Thanks for your feedback.

Some of my thoughts/questions :

• Do advanced users need a wizard? They can skip it and go directly to that view Link

If new, the user would then go to a page that is structured similarly to the You Need to Know page, where the different wallet criteria are explained, followed by

• Shall I take all the info from the "You Need to Know" page? Should I add anything more?

• What about that step?

I will prepare everything on Monday.
Natalia

[wbnns]

@natiwa

Thanks, regarding:

Do advanced users need a wizard? They can skip it and go directly to that view Link

No, and this would be a new wireframe, where only the table is shown (Step 4, above).

Shall I take all the info from the "You Need to Know" page? Should I add anything more?

No, this would be a new page, laid out the same way as the "You Need to Know" page, with different content. The content would be the scoring criteria along with their explanations.

What about that step?

This is a different flow; this step wouldn't exist. It's its own version that we can compare to the previous flow that you put together on Monday, as one of the options that the community will eventually vote on.

Let's connect first to go over this before you put together the wireframes.

[natiwa]

Hi Will,

Please take a look at this. I hope this is what you have in mind. Link to the clickable wireframe

Natalia

[Cobra-Bitcoin]

@natiwa I really like that wireframe, looks very nice.

[wbnns]

@natiwa

Thank you very much. Yes, great job translating the notes into the new wireframes.

Let's plan to review all wireframes to date at this Friday's meeting with the goal of beginning the actual mock-ups (handheld/tablet, desktop) on Monday.

We'll be leaving some additional comments in the Invision previews in the interim.

[wbnns]

Hello, this is just a quick update to all who are following this thread to confirm that the wireframes we've previously been working on, are now being converted to actual mock-ups (desktop and mobile) for everyone to review.

[natiwa]

I will send all previews till Wednesday. Can we once move our Friday meeting to Thursday at the same time?

[wbnns]

@natiwa

Thank you. Let's plan to meet on Monday instead of Thursday, that way we can give people a chance to leave feedback on the new previews, prior to the meeting.

[Cobra-Bitcoin]

Very excited to see the mock ups :)

[natiwa]

Hi all,

Please take a look at all mockups:

Flow 1:
Desktop
Tablet
Mobile

Flow 2:
Desktop
Tablet
Mobile

You are able to comment directly in InVision.

[wbnns]

@natiwa

Ok, great, thank you - we'll review.

[Cobra-Bitcoin]

Flow 2 is absolutely beautiful! Completely blown away by how awesome that is, seriously cool. I love the interactivity of the helper and how it pushes the user to exactly what they need. That's 100% what we need to be doing. Flow 1 is much too basic, and users really need more of a gentle hand and interactive process. I'll leave more detailed feedback later.

[Cobra-Bitcoin]

I've left feedback on the mockups for flow 2. There seem to be a few issues with fitting the comparison table properly into devices with smaller screens. But for the most part, it's hard to find flaws or other issues (except for a few other small nitpicks).

Ideally in the live site we will animate these transitions in the wizard. Looking forward to seeing more progress on this.

[wbnns]

@Cobra-Bitcoin Thank you.

@crwatkins Could you please review the mockups and add your comments as well?

[crwatkins]

Here are some scattered comments on the mockups, which are mainly operation/implementation considerations and not look and feel. Some I may have mentioned before in this or other threads, and I apologize for the duplication.

1. I think it is probably time to drop Windows Mobile (since Microsoft has). I mention that now in case it affects layouts.

2. We will need some criteria to decide what wallets are good for new users. @wbnns asked me for a sample set which I provided, but it may not be as easy as it sounds to come up with concrete criteria and I solicit input from the community. I definitely want to avoid as much subjective categories as possible that tend to make reviews more difficult and contentious.

3. Is it anticipated that the expert selection would include all wallets while the novice selection would include a smaller subset? (That would probably be my preference.)

4. In some of the mockups there is a "basic knowledge" selection. With the number of wallets we have listed, I think it might be even more difficult to form three groups than two.

5. Even with two knowledge levels, and criteria filters, we may have some empty results. We may have to design some flows to guide users in expanding their criteria.

6. I like the color balls, but I suspect we also need some shape or word clues for color disabilities? Do we have to combine the mockup proposals for that?

7. As I mentioned above, the hardware listings might be challenge to display in a meaningful manner given very few differentiating criteria.

8. The Good/Pass/Fail perhaps could be renamed. We have never actually exposed these words to end users yet. I'm very cautious on making this suggestion however, because I continue to discover over time how brilliantly the scoring was designed and chosen by @saivann, @harding, and others. Input from them on the wisdom of potentially using other labels to describe these scores (e.g. perhaps "Poor" instead of "Fail") would be greatly appreciated.

[wbnns]

@crwatkins Thank you. Regarding your comments:

1. I think it is probably time to drop Windows Mobile (since Microsoft has). I mention that now in case it affects layouts.

Agreed. Thanks for mentioning. Discussed this with Natalie during our meeting last Friday. Will open a PR to remove.

1. We will need some criteria to decide what wallets are good for new users. @wbnns asked me for a sample set which I provided, but it may not be as easy as it sounds to come up with concrete criteria and I solicit input from the community. I definitely want to avoid as much subjective categories as possible that tend to make reviews more difficult and contentious.

👍

1. Is it anticipated that the expert selection would include all wallets while the novice selection would include a smaller subset? (That would probably be my preference.)

Yes, this is what we were thinking.

1. In some of the mockups there is a "basic knowledge" selection. With the number of wallets we have listed, I think it might be even more difficult to form three groups than two.

Agreed, we're going to update the mockup to only show two groups.

1. Even with two knowledge levels, and criteria filters, we may have some empty results. We may have to design some flows to guide users in expanding their criteria.

Yes, we're going to organize the different selections in a spreadsheet so we can start to see how these will filter down to get a better idea of how practical and/or helpful some of these filtering options are going to be.

1. I like the color balls, but I suspect we also need some shape or word clues for color disabilities? Do we have to combine the mockup proposals for that?

Not sure; good idea to use shape and/or word clues.

1. As I mentioned above, the hardware listings might be challenge to display in a meaningful manner given very few differentiating criteria.

Yes. We're thinking we can take another pass at this once some of these other items are in order.

1. The Good/Pass/Fail perhaps could be renamed. We have never actually exposed these words to end users yet.

How about: Favorable or Good (Green circle) / Caution (Yellow triangle) / Warning (Red square) - ?

We're not sure the word "Fail" should be used anywhere, as we suspect most people will have an inclination to not want to use products and/or services with something failing associated with it. We were thinking it might be better to use the word "Warning", instead.

Also, we're suggesting the word "Caution" instead of "Pass" in association with the yellow score - the color yellow could be confusing, since in many cases yellow is generally associated with slowing down, yielding, or exercising caution.

[natiwa]

Hi all,

I have improved all your comments from Invision.

You can find improved mockups here:
Flow 1:
Desktop
Tablet
Mobile

Flow 2:
Desktop
Tablet
Mobile

Natalia

[Cobra-Bitcoin]

"Good, Caution and Warning" is pretty nice. Though we can always change around these words after the redesign, probably shouldn't think too much on them right now.

The new mockups look pretty much perfect, seems like we're close to begin implementing now? I'm still 100% behind flow 2 and on having the wizard/helper. Is flow 1 still being considered? To me flow 2 just seems so much superior, and has clearly had more time and effort put into it. When it comes to implementing though, we're going to have to test it pretty thoroughly since there's a lot of moving parts involved across many different device sizes.

I also really love the "Discover more" section floating to the right of the content, very useful.

[natiwa]

I'm glad to hear that. Let's wait for the other feedback but I feel we are very close to finding "that one" solution.

[wbnns]

@crwatkins

Hey, for the Wallet type comparison page:

Do you have an initial set of positives and negatives you would suggest to include under each wallet type?

[wbnns]

@Cobra-Bitcoin

Yes, it's getting closer to coming together. Flow 2 seems to be the front-runner. We've kept Flow 1 for reference if we need to fall-back onto anything more simple in case any of these enhancements turn out to not be feasible. Flow 2 is getting much more attention between the two at this point.

In Flow 2, the table layout with the scoring still needs some work, mostly on handheld/mobile, and we're trying to see if there is another way we can present a comparison of scores without a table or an awkward horizontal scroll. In current form, it may be difficult to read on a smaller handheld screen, and on some devices, due to the number of scoring fields, some of the longer scoring terms (i.e. Environment, Validation, Transparency) run the risk of overlapping onto other scoring terms.

We have a progress meeting scheduled for Monday at 14:00 UTC.

Related: #1148, #2892, #2858, #1986, #2723

[wbnns]

We've prepared tables of the current wallet scores for comparison --

Desktop (Linux, Mac and Windows - scores and available wallets are the same across all operating systems):

Android:

iOS:

Hardware:

Web:

...in conjunction with examining what the user experience might be if using the new criteria selection tool in Flow 2:

Some notes / observations:

• We assume that we wouldn't show any wallets for a particular scoring category if they have yellow or red associated with it.
• We're not sure if it makes sense for the "Privacy" category to be subdivided into three subcategories; perhaps if any of the subcategories would result in yellow or red, then no wallets would be shown if that parent category (Privacy) was selected by the user as part of important criteria.
• Based on the first bullet point above, there are instances where no wallet would be shown based on selection criteria. We need a mockup for when no wallets match a user's criteria.
• It appears that at present on bitcoin.org wallet pages, red is never shown despite failing scores. We need to clarify exactly when yellow and/or red should be shown.

Please let us know if anyone has any feedback they would like to add.

Cc: @natiwa, @Cobra-Bitcoin, @crwatkins, @maxwellmons

[wbnns]

Apologies and an additional FYI that the previous message has been edited to include the scoring tables and wallet availability for all operating systems / environments.

[Cobra-Bitcoin]

Perhaps we can have a "Do you intend to store a lot of Bitcoin?" step, and if they answer yes, we just send them straight to hardware wallets. IMO most newbies are better off using a hardware wallet for anything >$1000.

[crwatkins]

@Cobra-Bitcoin I think a "purpose" selector is a reasonable consideration. @JTuwiner's wallet selection page (which we indirectly link to from our exchange page and our resource page) provides a good example of this.

[natiwa]

@wbnns Have you seen this solution for a mobile device? LINK
When you select the one criteria from the list you would see the comparison of wallets for only that criteria.

[crwatkins]

@wbnns Thanks for the tables above

It appears that at present on bitcoin.org wallet pages, red dots are never shown despite failing scores. We need to clarify exactly when yellow dots and/or red dots should be shown.

Could you show us the table with the "red dots" also?

On the subject of the "warning" and "caution" terminology: I ran those words by a few people and I got the the response that those two words basically mean the same thing and no one knew for sure which one was better. I think we might have to use something different.

[wbnns]

@natiwa Thanks for the link, yes, looks great. Can you please work that in for the other places where a table might have been shown on mobile/handheld devices to see if that solves remaining viewport issues?

@Cobra-Bitcoin @crwatkins We can add some kind of question to the wizard to direct people directly to hardware wallets - not sure we should denominate it as $1000 US Dollars, though. In reviewing traffic for the past 12 months, out of 11 million visitors to the site, 80% were from outside the US. Perhaps we could generalize the question to not tie it to one nation's currency equivalent, especially since so many people are coming from outside the US; but not sure how to word it objectively (e.g. "Do you plan to store a large amount of bitcoin in your wallet?" is subjective).

@crwatkins I've updated the above table to indicate where red would be present. As for terminology, understood, thanks - when we have some live previews available, we can come up with a few options and then we can do a user poll. In the interim, I've renamed the fields in the table to good (checkgood), pass (checkpass) and fail (checkfail) to correspond to the values in the data fields that previously weren't exposed on the wallet pages. On the subject of the scoring values:

• It appears 'checkgood' is never applied to any of the privacy subcategories, only 'checkpass' or 'checkfail' are used in association with scoring values. Also, there are instances where wallets receive a 'checkfail' in 2 out of 3 privacy subcategories but still receive a 'checkpass' (e.g. Bitcoin Wallet and Edge Wallet) for their overall privacy score along with the color green on the wallet page. Not sure it should be 'checkpass' if 2/3 of the subcategories are 'checkfail' - or that it should be green. For now, changing the Privacy column to TBD for wallets until we can get clarification on what the intended logic is (or what it should be).

• For hardware wallets, a 'checkneutral' term is used, instead of 'checkgood', 'checkpass', or 'checkfail' like in the other categories. We noted this creates an issue because a Trezor device, for example, would be used with a Trezor wallet, which is not on bitcoin.org. The phrasing "Please see the Fee Control score for the software wallet you plan to use" that is currently appearing on the hardware wallet page for Trezor under the scoring is a bit confusing since the user wouldn't know where to go to see a "Fee Control" score for wallets that say this. Also, this is appearing as green even though the term checkneutral is used, so we're not sure what the color should be. We have put N/A in the relevant columns above for now.

• We assume that if checkgood is present, the scoring color should be green, if checkpass is present, the scoring color should be yellow, and that if checkfail is present the scoring color should be red. If that is not correct, we need a specification for when green, yellow or red should be shown.

[natiwa]

I have improved all your comments (The links are the same as previous) + created this new screen .

[wbnns]

@natiwa Ok, thanks, we'll review. 👍

[wbnns]

@crwatkins

Hey, just wanted to follow-up - did you get a chance to review the updated scoring tables and the additional observations/assumptions regarding the scoring specification?

We were hoping to get your feedback.

[crwatkins]

We can add some kind of question to the wizard to direct people directly to hardware wallets
[...]
not sure how to word it objectively (e.g. "Do you plan to store a large amount of bitcoin in your wallet?" is subjective)

Perhaps the criteria is "long term storage" vs "frequent small transactions"

[crwatkins]

• It appears 'checkgood' is never applied to any of the privacy subcategories, only 'checkpass' or 'checkfail' are used in association with scoring values. Also, there are instances where wallets receive a 'checkfail' in 2 out of 3 privacy subcategories but still receive a 'checkpass' (e.g. Bitcoin Wallet and Edge Wallet) for their overall privacy score along with the color green on the wallet page. Not sure it should be 'checkpass' if 2/3 of the subcategories are 'checkfail' - or that it should be green. For now, changing the Privacy column to TBD for wallets until we can get clarification on what the intended logic is (or what it should be).

This seems correct per our wallet scoring criteria for privacy which states:

To get a good score, the wallet must avoid address reuse by using a new change address for each transaction, avoid disclosing information to peers or central servers and be compatible with Tor.

To get a passing score, the wallet must avoid address reuse by using a new change address for each transaction.

That said, I've been concerned about the lack of differentiation of our privacy scoring for some time now, especially anticipating the day we would expose them to users in a more obvious presentation. For just this reason, a year ago, I proposed changing the privacy scoring in #2462 but failed to come up with a change that was acceptable (even to myself).

To further complicate this issue, I'll point out that the address reuse scoring is probably no longer pertinent since avoiding address reuse is now a requirement for listing #1327 (further complication is that we have a wallet listed as failing this, which probably isn't up to date).

I think it would be great if we could present this existing scoring in a way that the lack of differentiation doesn't confuse users. If we are unable to do that, perhaps we could leave the confusing criteria out of the selectors.

We absolutely need to upgrade this section of the scoring in the future, but I hope we can find a presentation for our existing scoring now.

[crwatkins]

• For hardware wallets, a 'checkneutral' term is used, instead of 'checkgood', 'checkpass', or 'checkfail' like in the other categories. [...] Also, this is appearing as green even though the term checkneutral is used, so we're not sure what the color should be.

I agree that we have very little differentiation for hardware wallets (that's not necessarily a bad thing), so we may not even choose to expose it with selectors. If we do, and we expose the checkneutral categories, I would suggest gray.

• We assume that if checkgood is present, the scoring color should be green, if checkpass is present, the scoring color should be yellow, and that if checkfail is present the scoring color should be red. If that is not correct, we need a specification for when green, yellow or red should be shown.

That looks good to me.

[wbnns]

Hello, just wanted to draft and confirm the initial set of features that users will be able to filter wallets by in the wallet selector for the newly redesigned wallet pages:

The proposed features that can be filtered are:

• multisig
• segwit
• bech32
• lightning
• hardware wallet support
• full node support
• coin shuffling

Any suggestions for revision - features to reword, add or remove?

[Cobra-Bitcoin]

That looks good to me. Don't really have any problems with it. Especially like that coin shuffling is there since we really ought to let wallets good for preserving Bitcoin's fungibility set themselves apart in some way.

[crwatkins]

I'm OK with that list. I think bech32 support should be full bech32 support (sending and receiving) whether we call it that or not. In addition, we may want to add legacy address support (p2pkh/p2sh) as not all of our wallets support both sending and receiving.

One addition item might be 2FA support. While this is implemented using multisig, I would propose that the existing multisig on the list be used to denote user designated co-signers, while 2FA support would denote a third party co-signing service based on some form of 2FA.

[wbnns]

@Cobra-Bitcoin @crwatkins Thanks.

[wbnns]

Just wanted to follow-up on the Privacy category that has been getting broken out in the mock-up:

Since avoiding address reuse is a requirement in order to be listed, not sure it makes sense to provide this on the frontend in the table for the purposes of comparison (all wallets would have a green circle). Also, since hardware wallets do not have privacy scores broken out, would recommend that we stick with the current logic/status quo, which is to show one privacy-related dot, with its color determined by the underlying subcategory scores. This will also help on tablet and mobile, where we have a much more finite amount of screen space to work with.

[wbnns]

We're drafting the feature reference table that will be used to originate what wallets will be displayed as features are toggled in the new selector.

Feel free to update the table if you know certain features are or aren't available for a specific wallet.

Cc: @natiwa, @Cobra-Bitcoin, @crwatkins, @maxwellmons, @alexcherman

[wbnns]

We're also now drafting the criteria descriptions that will be displayed on the criteria selection page as well as in tool tips when users mouseover the tooltip icons in the selector:

Edits welcome.

Cc: @natiwa, @Cobra-Bitcoin, @crwatkins, @maxwellmons, @alexcherman

[crwatkins]

@wbnns I think that's a great draft! Maybe we will figure out some tweaks as we use them in context, but I would be happy going with what you have.

By the way, I'm not thrilled with the term "Benchmarks", but I'm having a hard time coming up with anything better. Maybe we should call that list "Features" and then the second group (with 2FA in it) could be called "Capabilities"?

[wbnns]

@crwatkins Ok, great. What do you think about "Highlights" instead, since toggling one or more of the terms to follow would highlight criteria wallets rank well for?

[crwatkins]

I think "Highlights" might be even more confusing to me. What about a different approach of not trying to name them but describing what to do with them? Maybe something like "What is important to you?" or "Filter based on what is important to you".

[wbnns]

@crwatkins

We are going to do that in the wizard (not live yet), before the selector:

Maybe will just leave as "Criteria" for now, and can revisit later if we need to. The main reason it got changed to "Benchmarks" on this particular page was in case people skip the wizard we were thinking they might not understand what "Criteria" means. This might not be a concern, however, with the criteria descriptions mentioned above that will appear in the tool tips.

[wbnns]

@crwatkins

Hey, following up on:

I think bech32 support should be full bech32 support (sending and receiving) whether we call it that or not. In addition, we may want to add legacy address support (p2pkh/p2sh) as not all of our wallets support both sending and receiving.

While not all wallets offer full bech32 support. All wallets facilitate transactions to legacy addresses, no? If so, we were thinking it may not be necessary to include this item in the feature criteria, since toggling it would have no effect.

[crwatkins]

Wasabi and BLW do not support receiving to legacy addresses (as indicated in the spreadsheet).

[wbnns]

@crwatkins Ok, thanks.

[crwatkins]

By the way, I'm really happy to have the legacy address selector because we debated even listing wallets that did not fully support legacy addresses. Wasabi and BLW provide some advanced features that our community can certainly benefit from knowing about, but both have support issues when users attempt to fund the wallets, or receive payments, from sources that do not support bech32. This will go away in (hopefully short) time, but for the time being, it is nice to at least have a place to flag this.

[wbnns]

Just an FYI that we're drafting the feature descriptions in case anyone has any changes or feedback they would like to add.

Cc: @natiwa, @Cobra-Bitcoin, @crwatkins, @maxwellmons, @alexcherman

[wbnns]

Here is a draft of the OS Pros/Cons, the final section of new content as part of the wizard/selector, for all to review.

Cc: @natiwa, @Cobra-Bitcoin, @crwatkins, @maxwellmons, @alexcherman

[crwatkins]

Here is a draft of the OS Pros/Cons

I'm having a bit of a hard time coming up with pros and cons that are accurate, substantial, and seem to make sense. I fear this might be kind of like trying to come up with just a couple pros and cons for buying a car vs. buying a boat. You kind of know what you want already and the main points "Works on water/Doesn't work on land" are kind of silly while there are way too many finer points to choose from as being significant.

Are we married to pros and cons here? If we are, I hope someone else can polish these up because I'm having a hard time. If not, perhaps I could come up with a short statement about each instead.

[wbnns]

@crwatkins

The current list of pros/cons that we've put together seems like a good start.

I fear this might be kind of like trying to come up with just a couple pros and cons for buying a car vs. buying a boat. You kind of know what you want already and the main points "Works on water/Doesn't work on land" are kind of silly while there are way too many finer points to choose from as being significant.

We don't recommend removing this because we don't think we can assume that people, especially the massive number of new users, will already have an idea of what kind of wallet they want or that they would be able to easily weigh the pros/cons. For others, we present the option to skip the wizard.

[crwatkins]

I don't think we should remove the description; I just couldn't wordsmith the pros and cons into something that I found balanced enough (some qualities seem like they would equally apply to other platforms, but weren't listed).

We already have descriptions of these platforms embedded in our scoring text. So I started with those, and tried to cover all the important items in the pros and cons listed and wrote a one sentence description of each. How is this?

---

Mobile
Mobile wallets are useful for in-person transactions and are generally safe from other apps and malware that you may download, but they may be easy to steal or lose making it important to understand PINs/passwords and backups.

Desktop
Desktop wallets generally have richer, more advanced features and run on platforms with sufficient resources to provide full local validation of transactions in addition to being able to more easily import and export information, but are in general more susceptible to malware that may be on the platform.

Web
Web wallets can be accessed from any web browser, but in general are considered to have more risks than mobile or desktop wallets and may require more trust in the wallet provider.

Hardware
Hardware wallets are devices suited to storing larger amounts by providing additional security to software wallets by storing keys offline and requiring a connection to your computer to manage funds.

[wbnns]

@crwatkins

Ok, understood, thanks for clarifying and also for the additional text to compare. Here are mockups for each version --

Version w/ bullet points (pros/cons):

Version w/ description underneath: