Trezor Introduces Bitcoin-Only Firmware

All interested users can now download the Bitcoin-only firmware by SatoshiLabs, creator of the hardware wallet Trezor, the company said.

When it comes to this “customized version” of the wallet and the firmware, what is currently available is the beta version of the firmware, which is a permanent software programmed into a read-only memory. It can be used by both Trezor One and Trezor Model T owners, the company claims. SatoshiLabs has added, though, that they plan to introduce “a stable version of Bitcoin-only firmware in the next month’s release.”

In either case, the company says that users can switch between the regular (full altcoin support) and Bitcoin-only firmware as many times as they want.

This beta version comes as a part of Trezor’s testing phase, wherein the Trezor beta testing community provides feedback to SatoshiLabs, in order to improve the product before its release to the public. In return, beta testers get to contribute to the shaping of the product, but also get early access to new products and features.

And while some people seem to be excited by the news, others seem to be confused about how this new firmware differs from the current one.

However, seemingly in response to this news, Rodolfo Novak, aka NVK, founder of Bitcoin wallet Coinkite, tweeted that “Making a Bitcoin-only Firmware is silly if you are still going to spend the resources into maintaining the Shitcoin Firmware,” and adding that it could be worse yet “as feature parity in two separate codebases could cause even further issues.”

Pavol Rusnak, co-founder and CTO at SatoshiLabs, replied with: “We build both firmwares from a single codebase. A concept of conditional compilation might come difficult to comprehend to a layman, but there are better methods than copy-paste.”

Meanwhile, just recently, SatoshiLabs introduced a new security standard to protect the backup of one’s recovery phrase, which is the key to accessing your digital assets. This new feature, available on the company’s Trezor Model T, is called Shamir Backup, after cryptographer Adi Shamir.