Citadel Wallet building hardware wallet for Hedera ecosystem

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from Block West capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have Andy kulikan founder of Citadel wallet Andy welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time hey Ashton really excited to be here and tell you about what I've been building definitely I'm excited to dive into the hedera ecosystem I know it's one of

0:21those protocols that's been in exponential growth and there's definitely a need for wallet and security infrastructure as well so I'm excited to dive into that with you but I'd love to start off our conversation together by just hearing to start a little bit of your background in blockchain Tech how you got into hedera and that how that led to Citadel

0:43Yeah so before getting into blockchain my personal career is in electrical engineering I've been a hardware engineer electrical engineer for seven years already it's hard to believe that many years have passed graduated in 2016 and directly dived into the industry and found some jobs and started developing systems mainly focused on surprisingly security

1:08areas Automotive avionics military industry so I've been kind of having a lot of experience in that field and being security focused and security minded and then around 2017 when the crypto Bible started to happen I got really interested in cryptocurrencies initially just as an investment this is a new asset class and it is trying to decentralize Finance

1:37there were a lot of interesting things and ideas going on at the time but also there was a lot of hype so in 2017 I started doing research I was a little bit disappointed because of how much hype there is and how much the technology itself is lacking what this projects are promising to build and then around 2018 learned about hedera and actually learned about

2:03squirrel's Labs which wasn't even hit there at the time it was a private company selling the license to this hashgraph technology that Dr Lemon Baird had had invented and I got really interested into it in this technology read through the white paper listened to a lot of lectures and videos by Dr Lemon beard and I was hooked I was like if there is any technology in web 3 that

2:27can make it and actually bring this to reality make this a real Financial infrastructure to decentralize the traditional Finance it has to be hit there and I got really interested initially joined as a community member started to promote the network on Twitter as H bar to the Moon and be having that engineering background and developing systems security focused systems I felt the need

2:56that there is something missing even though there were some other Hardware wallets in the ecosystem but because the ecosystem is so nascent and new even the hardware wallets aren't lacking that maturity they just seem like nobody cared about product development let's put together something quick there's a lot of people with money in this industry let's just make some money

3:18that's how it felt like to me based on my experiences using this Hardware wallets so I felt like there's a real Gap to fill there building a hardware wallet that is very user friendly very secure but at the same time supporting many more services than just crypto transfers because that's just the beginning of all these things crypto transfers are going to be

3:43the most boring part in the future in my opinion of what you can do with these networks and I decided to fully focus on hedera support hedera and build this product and that's kind of how I get into it there and then started thinking about developing this Hardware wallet yeah amazing great backstory Andy and to have that experience as you know electrical and Hardware engineering that

4:11sounds like the ideal experience to develop one of the coolest products I could think of would would be you know a crypto wallet that actually has security and a good user experience of course needed to onboard hopefully the next millions of people into cryptocurrency as well so I'm guessing that you know you analyzed the current Hardware wallets you know there's only a

4:35few that are that have really done well you know treasure and Ledger and things like that but they're I don't think they're they're very catered to hedera or probably you know they also have vulnerabilities in them as well can you talk about how do you approach that and start you know hey I'm going to make create a company to create a hardware wallet for hedera that's secure but

4:59also user friendly and has all these attributes where how did you start with that and where are you positioning Citadel wallet in you know this mix yeah no that's a really good question I mean initially when I started thinking about developing a hardware wallet I started looking into existing Hardware wallets and to see how they developed these devices what kind of electronic

5:21components they use what kind of security measures they take to make sure that the wallet is actually providing that security that they promising to their users and I quickly realized I mean in terms of so the hardware wallets themselves have two different main components in them the secure element and the microprocessor that communicates everything else in the external world

5:45with the secure element which protects and holds your private keys the secure elements themselves on these Hardware wallets are pretty high security so they will be able to protect your keys but the microcontroller which is another important component in the wallet were very generic components in this Hardware wallets and that's a security attack Vector if someone can

6:11access the microcontroller they can communicate with the secure element in sign the transactions without even needing to get access to your private keys right you don't really need to have the private keys to send the H bars or other crypto out you just need to have a way to communicate with the secure element to sign those transactions so I just started digging into

6:35the overall architectures that these wallets are built building and also hardware architectures and also software architectures at the same time I was looking in the overall iot secure iot industry ecosystem what kind of new technologies are coming up that none of these Hardware wallets are even aware of that I could utilize to enhance the security and I found this latest on there's this

7:02arm processor company that's making arm microprocessors and they have a brand new architecture for a new microprocessor that is specifically for focused on secure applications and they have already a lot of cryptographic features built in memory protection on the hardware level built into the microprocessor which now combined with that secure element which our secure

7:28element is even higher security than anything else in the market from Hardware perspective we're elevating the overall security of the device to a whole new level and then we also need to think about the software if the South were written on this microprocessor is not that secure doesn't matter if the if the processor itself is secure it will still be ways

7:54for software attacks to gain access of the device so then I partnered with head starter who has a very talented and experienced software development team and it coincidentally some of the developers from the team had experience with the slope with this kind of low power iot devices so they have played with this kind of microprocessor which requires a little bit different type of

8:22an expertise than just web programming through JavaScript so their understanding of hedera combined with their understanding of developing low-level code-based devices was the perfect match and they have already developed most of the firmware and we have some damage is coming up very soon I'll try to show a very quick demo today as well how you

8:49turn on the device and how you interact with it amazing and so from what I understand you've been in the works with this with your team for a while but it's actually not it's not out yet and the pre-orders are coming soon yes yes so the pre-orders are coming at the end of this month March 29th and 30th they will be happening on head starter launch pad through nfts so we're

9:18combining web3 with the hardware wallet if you buy the nfts you become part of the nft project which comes with many utilities associated with Citadel wallet and NFP project and on top of that all these nfts come with the hardware wallet itself so when we go to market which is we're estimating at the end of this year you will be able to Simply go on the

9:43website connect your wallet we see the nfts in the wallet you claim your Hardware wallet and you're good to go we ship it to you to your address so we're trying to also experiment with web3 try to bring in all the benefits of nfds into this project to help us bring the brand build the brand and the community on top of it yeah I think that's a great approach

10:08incorporating the nfts and you know fine it's a great added value for nfts one of the ways that they should be used besides just you know this digital artwork so I like that I'm definitely going to check that out for the for the pre-order March 29. now you mentioned that you know as you're developing it you have some of the prototypes already maybe you could share a little bit on

10:30you know what it looks like and if you can turn it on things like that yeah so yesterday I'm not sure when this interview goes live but yesterday we did show the first look of the wallet to the community on Twitter and a lot of people were very excited to see it finally becoming a reality until this point it was just a 3D concept on the website but we do have the wallet ready already let

10:54me see yeah so this is the wallet itself you can we are going to have multiple different colors right now the first prototype is in gray color it has a middle metallic band to protect the device even further the electronics if you drop it at this stainless steel metallic band is going to protect the electronics display itself is touch screen full color

11:20awesome and we have two buttons one is for powering the device the other one for approving transactions now let's power the device I'm not sure if you can see through the camera some sometimes the lighting is not very good this is the development version of the firmware beta version of the firmware on the wallet itself it's asking if I'm okay to move

11:46forward I just click you can see the Citadel wallet logo and right now it's asking if I want to create since this device was never powered down before or initiated before it's asking if I want to create a new account new wallet or import an existing wallet similar to the experience with The Ledger wallet so if I click a new wallet it will ask me to input the Access pin

12:11this pin will be used in the following times every time you try to access the device nobody else can access this device unless they have that pin so I'm just going to input simple just zeros for now you can see touch screen is very seamless and responsive three four and now it's displaying the mnemonic phrase that you need to write down on

12:38the paper or on a metal sheet and store somewhere or save it and your account a private key and public key pair will be generated based on this mnemonic phrase again it's a touch screen you can scroll down very easily there is no buttons that you need to push and move to the next steps to see every single word it's it's user experience is going to

13:02be very convenient and then once you have written down everything noted now it says awaiting for transactions from this point on you will be able to pair with hashback hashback is one of the leading software wallets in the ecosystem there's other software wallets which in the future we're going to support as well initially we're working

13:29with the team closely to make sure that we take care of all the bugs make sure that our sdks are ready to be launched publicly for anyone else to use but right now we're pairing with hashtag and signing each product transfers nft transfers native staking all those transaction types that the community is looking for today so that's the that's a quick demo again this is

13:57the beta version the final version will have a much Slicker looking UI we haven't had much time to spend on the UI yet we just want to make sure all the functions and services are supported and the security side of things are taken care of and then move to the final step of developing very easy to navigate through UI and with that with the touchscreen it's just going to be very

14:22easy to use yeah I know it looks like a great little device and thank you for that demo Andy and the touchscreen definitely makes a huge difference you know I remember back on the original ledgers like hitting buttons very hard to use and even the original treasure not having touch screen makes a world of difference so I think it looks beautiful and

14:44I'm looking forward to seeing it out and to getting and so from from what I understand you're coming out with the pre-orders and there's an nft and now does the device it stores you know the h-bar token and also can store other tokens in the hedera ecosystem and the nft like the one that for the pre-order and other hedera nfts as well yeah yeah

15:08so it will support anything on hedera network you will be able to store nfts tokens stable coins your age bars and anything else that there are supports in the future and you will be able to sign all transactions based on the services that hedera supports a smart contracts schedule transactions nft transfers and associations and H bar transfers so because we're focused on hedera

15:35specifically we're able to make it really native truly native to hedera and with this device you don't really need to move assets between software and Hardware wallets to be able to do things if you want to participate in defy defy applications a lot of times people move assets from their Hardware wallet to be able to sign the smart contract transactions and that's a huge risk

16:02on their assets with this wallet device the goal is you pair it with a software wallet and sign any type of transaction and power off you're good to go amazing and yourself following hedera you know for quite a few years before coming into the hardware wallet side I'm curious on your take on where you see hedera at as an ecosystem and in the H bar token growth you know with

16:32defy and dapps right now you know because from what I understand they've been around for a long time they were more focused on you know Enterprises and sort of private and then it pivoted more to an open source ecosystem that had all these dapps and all of a sudden you know D5 started to explode on hedera and sort of catch up to ethereum and these major ecosystems you know with

16:53even from now to the it seems like crypto in general and hedera has had a pretty good year so far in 2023 by the time we get to the end of this year on the launch of the wallet and for the years to come you know how bullish are you and where do you sort of expect a lot of growth to happen in the hedera ecosystem yeah I mean Heather has been growing

17:17really fast since day one and I'm really initially you're right hedera was more focused on Enterprises trying to behind the scene build those connections with Enterprises and communicate with them how this web3 technologist can benefit them and improve their processes make it more efficient and more trusted Enterprise need to communicate between each other to create that trust layer

17:42but I'm really happy that the community has been so vocal and has been growing so fast that hedera couldn't ignore the community so now they are starting to be very involved with the community and like you said we have been seeing a lot of really good projects and applications coming from the community side and very surprising coming out of nowhere it's

18:05just community members that have dived really deep into the technology and understand the power of this technology and performance characteristics and they have decided to get their hands dirty and actually build projects and applications be the first movers of this network from the from the community side so I can I think the right move for hedera is to lead from both both sides

18:32from the community side and from the Enterprises side obviously with Enterprises there is no hype there is no excitement they cannot share too much and a lot of times people in the community say why don't this Enterprises talk about what they're building because this Enterprises have very competitive nature to them and they cannot talk about something until they

18:58have launched it otherwise some other big companies might pick up their ID and having the resources and finances in the time build it themselves and get ahead of this Enterprise so in terms of Enterprise I'm not surprised that they're very quiet and not really active on social media and they shouldn't let them do what they're doing and actually the main benefit and value

19:25that's going to come from Enterprise is the applications themselves that launch on the network even them just talking about these applications is not going to bring any value as long as they bring those to the market and they start running High TPS on the network that's automatically going to attract many more projects many more Enterprises and it's going to create

19:49that positive feedback loop loop from the community side I'm really happy that many early supporters similar like me I'm also starting to build on the network I've been seeing so many really talented guys starting to build projects defy has been taking off and that was just a team of community members getting together and building a project hashback

20:14has probably hundred thousand users active users monthly and it was just a team of guys who had met each other in this course and decided to build this wallet so it's been really amazing to see the growth I think with more utility we have already seen the signs of Enterprise scale coming to hedera with admob.io launching on the network and we've seen upwards of thousands of TPS

20:40running on the network daily with more TPS coming to the network with more applications that bring real world value to this companies and users and customers it's going to be almost impossible to ignore this network in a few years and that's going to directly then reflect in HBO's price I'm not really worried about ishwarz price I don't even look at it at this point

21:07people are concerned about tokenomics tokenomics have no difference in any cryptos price it's just something that people pay attention to when there is no value there's no utility to this network so people start focusing on things that don't really matter when the network is valuable when network is being utilized it will be directly reflected in the

21:33issuar price and I think next few years is going to Hitler is going to explode especially with AI taking off and all the security concerns coming up what's real what's not real who generated the identity is going to be big and hedera has been focused on those things since day one they're already for that wave when it's coming wow great insights Andy into the hedera network

21:58and you're right about you know the Enterprises I feel like there's I've looked at the hedera you know Council and there's like Google and these large companies and you know they don't talk about things they just do them so I feel like once once they start doing it and it's live then that will reflect in the pricing you know there's not all this build up it's gonna be like a flick

22:19of a switch and all of a sudden the largest companies in the world will be using this so very exciting I appreciate all your insights and following the ecosystem closely for many years looking forward to the release of the wallet for the viewers that want to learn about you know more details on the Citadel wallet and also how to get access to the pre-orders for

22:41March 29th and the socials what is the best way way to start learning more and to figure out how to get into the pre-order yeah so if you want to get just the general idea about the wallet features security anything else you can go on to our website citadelwallet.io if you are more tech savvy and you really want to dive into the technical side of things how the

23:07hardware architecture is built and what kind of more details about all the interfaces and secure element and microprocessor you can go to docs dot citadelwallet.io that website includes a lot of technical information about the wallet for the for the pre-orders they're coming up March 29th it's going to happen on head starter platform it's headstarter.org

23:36and it's already the project is already live it's showing as upcoming it's not available for minting but you can go and learn more about the nft project and how that NFP project is connected to Citadel wallet all the utilities that it is going to bring to Citadel wallet project we also have a white paper available on the website if you go on the website

24:00on the top there is a pre-order about in a few press that it will show you all the nfts associated with the pre-order and on the bottom there is a white list button you can click in a white paper button you can click and read through our like 20 Page white paper that and that explains sit down wallet Guardians of The Citadel is the name of the NFD project and it

24:27it's coming the wallet is coming I'm really excited to finally bring it to the community I know their ecosystem is not as big as any other as other ecosystems yet but with this kind of a hardware wallet fully featuring hedera Network fully supporting hedera Network I'm hoping to put they're on the map as this high security network possible because the network itself is

24:54already very high security most secure network abst and now users will be protected at an equal level if not higher and it's just going to elevate the whole hedora Network and the community hopefully that spreads out to other ecosystems as well incredible Andy I will leave those links for the pre-order and for the docs and Citadel wallet platform in the

25:21description box below all the best with the pre-order launch and moving forward to the launch of the wallet and thank you for the insights into the head Arrow ecosystem all the best with the project moving forward and let's follow up in the near future sounds great thanks a lot for the interview Ashton thoroughly enjoyed it looking forward to coming back and give

25:42you updates