Coin Wallet (Monero crypto wallet)

General Project Showcase
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Website

Short description

Coin Wallet is a self-custodial/non-custodial, open-source cryptocurrency wallet, launched in 2015 by CoinSpace LLC, Georgia, USA, with support for Monero (XMR).

Additional details

Coin Wallet has a Monero solution that works without remote nodes and without downloading the full blockchain.

GitHub: CoinSpace · GitHub

We support 24 cryptocurrencies across all platforms: Web, mobile (iOS, Android), desktop (macOS, Linux, Windows), and Tor (.onion)

We added Monero in 2021: Release v4.0.0 Monero XMR · CoinSpace/CoinSpace · GitHub

For Monero (XMR), we developed a unique solution that sets us apart. Unlike traditional wallets, we do not download the full blockchain (250+ GB), and we also avoid using remote nodes - which often compromise privacy and security.

In our approach, transactions are processed locally on the user’s device when a transaction ID is entered. This reduces some convenience but provides significant advantages in security and speed (instant access to Monero).

CS Monero Wallet: GitHub - CoinSpace/cs-monero-wallet: Monero wallet
Monero Core JS: GitHub - CoinSpace/monero-core-js: JS library for creating Monero transactions
Monerolib: GitHub - CoinSpace/monerolib: Monero JavaScript library

This solution has been in use for 4 years already and has proven itself as a solid alternative: Reddit - The heart of the internet

We are also listed and tested in Monero and Tor directories: monero.observer, monerica, tor.run, tdw.is (plus various onion lists, which I won’t mention here to avoid compromising them).
All these listings were done freely and voluntarily by their owners and the community.

Anticipated question: Why isn’t Coin Wallet listed on getmonero.org?

We were previously rejected, most likely because our wallet is JavaScript-based. Quoting: “We don’t need more MyMonero and Edge on getmonero”
There was also a mention about transaction fees - not confirmed as the reason for rejection, but noted.

Summary

Advantages:

  • Light Monero wallet, works on all devices
  • Never shares the private view key with remote nodes, since syncing happens locally on the device
  • Full Tor network support (Tor + Monero wallet with no remote nodes)
  • Financial independence from on-ramps, swap aggregators, or donations (most wallets depend only on these)

Disadvantages:

  • JavaScript implementation
  • Transfer fees
  • Non-standard Monero user experience, users must add the txid manually.
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Do you want to also defend your use of JavaScript, or just list it as a disadvantage? :slight_smile:

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I am not much into crypto, but I really do not understand how can a self-custodial wallet impose fees.

I also really wonder if these heavy fees are really clear to the user.

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It’s not the wallet that imposes the fee. It’s the blockchain. It’s called “gas money”. You pay for every transaction you make on the chain.

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Factual and Honest. I like this guy.

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Not quite what I am getting from All About Fees | Coin Wallet

It says this app imposes extra fees above the network? Or am I not understanding this right?

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Oh… weird. I think you’re reading it right. Up to an additional 100USD in fees, no thanks.

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See, that’s what also made me wonder the second part… is this transparent enough to users? Or are they just fucked once transferred in.

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The reviews are also alarming if you look in the play store. All reviews seem overly positive and praising the app. A minority of negative reviews are very alarming even calling this a scam.

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The answer also suggests there are only network fees which contradicts what they write on their own website.

Edit:

I also checked the app. It does not inform you about the fees at any point and the information is not available either.

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honestly I’ve never heard of a wallet charging you fee’s. Personally I would stick with something like Cake Wallet , or their Monero only wallet.

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Charging additional fees for sending isn’t common. It appears that this wallet does so.

They can correct me if my assumption is wrong, but the “normal” way to do this is to add an extra output (recipient) to transactions you send. So if you’re sending 10 XMR to an intended recipient, it appears that they may charge an extra 0.05 XMR in fees. This is different than network fees.

On Privacy

Obviously privacy is the most relevant here.

Receiving Funds Privacy

Compared to other wallet scan approaches, putting in the specific transaction hash that you receive is worse for privacy than Cake Wallet and other standard wallets.

Normal Monero wallets have some protections, so that even if you’re using a remote mode that you don’t trust, that remote mode can’t see the exact transactions that you have received in your wallet.

For this wallet, the node you’re connected to (I assume it’s the app developer’s node by default? But maybe they let you add your own node?) can see the exact transaction hashes that your wallet receives. This is worse for privacy.

This is arguably the same privacy degradation as with lightweight wallets with an untrusted server, like MyMonero or Edge Wallet (by default; you can use your own server which avoids this).

Sending Funds Privacy

One of the very first proposed Monero wallets, X Wallet for iOS, planned on doing something similar with additional sending fees. That plan was abandoned following Monero community backlash at the time.

Most Monero transactions have exactly two outputs. Using this wallet could help your transactions stick out as abnormal (since they have 3). That said, there are other legitimate applications for sending transactions with 3 outputs.

The bigger concern in my view is that the app developer knows what transactions are made from the wallet, since they are a recipient of funds in those transactions. Although a Cake Wallet user using the Cake default node would similarly share to the node which transactions they make, you can use your own node to avoid this.

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I think we won’t defend it. It’s just a fact :slightly_smiling_face:

About fees, at first I wanted to answer briefly, but let’s think it through:

  1. Yes, we charge a transfer fee on some cryptocurrencies (10 out of 23), but in this context we’re talking about Monero, and Monero is on that list
  2. As a defense I can add this: most crypto wallets make money on buys, sells, swaps (for Monero - mostly swaps), and donations. The main problem with that model is dependency on third-party providers. We cannot guarantee they will keep working forever - licenses may expire, regulators may step in, or providers may simply stop supporting Monero (in fact, in August most on-ramp and swap providers paused Monero operations). Wallets also usually (or always) don’t show users the exact profit percentage they take on those services. How fair is that?
  3. Donations are an even sadder story. Since our release in 2015, many great wallets have shut down because the team couldn’t survive on donations. Maybe 5% managed to keep going that way.

We could debate fees endlessly, but we’d prefer to keep the focus on the product itself and our Monero solution (links to the github repos are above)

We’ve never done fake reviews or any other tricks. Negative reviews usually come down to people losing or forgetting their seed phrase, nothing unusual. We’re a self-custodial wallet, we don’t hold user funds :neutral_face:

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I’ll have to take your word for the reviews. However I must emphasize that the app at no point informs the user of the fees. This behaviour is definitely not normal for something that is called self custodial wallet. The lack of that transparency would lead me to write the same review if you use a wallet unknowingly that it imposes such fees.

How do you clarify the reviews that mention that the blockchain shows that part of the funds are transferred through other wallets?

I get that income is necessary, but it seems like quite a heavy fee. What did you not opt for a subscription model? I would never recommend someone to use this with such high fees when there are free alternatives.

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Given the additional transaction fees, how does Monero support in Coin Wallet stack up against Cake Wallet and Monerujo?

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How exactly does entering a specific transaction hash (txid) reduce privacy? Also, let’s compare this with the privacy loss when using remote nodes (not your own).

Once again, I kindly ask you to take a look at the Git repo

That comment is not accurate. The difference between custodial and self-custodial wallets is strictly about who holds the private keys. Please don’t confuse the terms if you’re not sure.

I don’t have a ready-made answer to this one, I’ll check with our support team to clarify

It’s a subjective opinion, what feels little for one person may feel like a lot for another. A subscription just to store your own keys in a self-custodial wallet? sorry :face_with_peeking_eye:

The answer is basically in the first section and in the repo itself.
“without remote nodes”, “transactions are processed locally on the user’s device”.
And one more point (not about privacy) simple access for regular users. In other wallets, if you haven’t opened them for a few days, syncing can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. With Coin Wallet, your XMR is always accessible instantly, without waiting (on any device)

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If you are connected to an untrusted node, and tell that untrusted node “please give me information about this specific transaction,” that node knows you requested information about that specific transaction. They know that, if you’re asking for information about it, you probably received that transaction.

For a normal wallet like monero-wallet-cli or Cake Wallet, when connected to an untrusted node, this node does not receive a list of incoming transactions you want to scan. The untrusted remote node does not learn what incoming transactions you receive. This is an intentional design decision.

It appears that the app has a hardcoded remote node set as an environment variable, which is not defined in the source code. I don’t see any options to configure your own node.

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We see this differently. With self custody I would expect that I control the funds and how I transfer them. If someone can take a cut out of that, that clearly seems not to be the the case.

Can you also address the concerns about transparency in the app of the fees which seems to be lacking?

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I am not saying anyone would take that, but neither would I take a wallet that takes a ‘big’ cut of the transactions. Neither options seem quite appealing tbh I personally think the first makes more sense as that is a fixed amount.

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A non-custodial wallet creating an extra output transaction without users consent or transparency = scam .

I am not even sure it fits under the definition of a non-custodial wallet.

Total scam !!!

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Why are you so focused on finding remote nodes in our solution? We don’t connect to a node, and we don’t sync the blockchain in the background. There are no nodes involved. Our monero wallet only works locally on the user’s device with their keys and a txid.

CS Monero Wallet: GitHub - CoinSpace/cs-monero-wallet: Monero wallet
Monero Core JS: GitHub - CoinSpace/monero-core-js: JS library for creating Monero transactions
Monerolib: GitHub - CoinSpace/monerolib: Monero JavaScript library

Judging by your questions and comments, I’m confident there’s a misunderstanding. In non-custodial wallets you own the keys. That’s the essence of the phrase repeated across all non-custodial wallets: “Not your keys, not your crypto.” These same keys allow you to access your Monero from any other Monero wallet (including competitors). Once again, I kindly ask “if you are not fully confident with cryptocurrency, wallet, monero terminology, please do not make misleading claims.”

As for transparency of fees - everything works according to the rules, which are published on our main page: https://coin.space/all-about-fees/
We even publish articles: https://coin.space/crypto-transaction-fees-a-simple-overview/
In Monero chats (matrix), users are aware and mention this regularly. We believe this is sufficient. Even you have been writing about fees for two days straight, though this was explained from the very beginning. At this point, it feels unfair to keep circling back to the same topic.

The same complain “In non-custodial wallets you own the keys”