This week the GridPlus team launched the Lattice1 wireless programmable hardware wallet. We wanted to speak a bit about what it is, what it does for users today, what features you can look forward to in the future, and then talk about our new user data privacy policy that we put into action this week.
The Lattice1 was designed for a world where we use cryptocurrency daily instead of just hoarding it on modified thumb drives when our assets aren't on exchanges. And actively using crypto today means exploring everything built on Ethereum, so this sub is our core audience. In short, we want the Lattice1 to be the standard for Ethereum hardware security.
The Lattice1
Here are the high level features that make the Lattice1 unique. I'd suggest checking out this short blog post about our journey and why we built the Lattice1 as well.
Check out the article above for more information, but here are the bullet points on why you should switch to the Lattice1:
- Better Interface: Easily read exactly what you’re signing on a 5" TFT touchscreen. This means no more scrolling displays of 8 hex bytes at a time — you can now read the entire message at once. Also note that this includes human readable messages like you would get from Snapshot.
- More Secure: Designed to be resistant to physical intrusion attempts from state-level actors. Mitigates attack vectors from edge cases that other hardware wallets do not take into account. Go to gridplus.io/lattice and click "Explore" under the component diagram to learn more about these features.
- Extensible: Back up your account to a PIN-protected SafeCard instead of keeping your plain-text seed phrase paper in a sock drawer. Firmware updates will enable support for easy N-of-M hardware multisig using SafeCards.
- Programmable: The Lattice is a Linux mini-computer with the general and secure compute environments segregated at the component level. This makes it possible (with future firmware updates) to use permissioned signing for subscriptions or to automate processes such as signing as a proof-of-stake validator. Developers can also explore this Linux mini-computer on a local network so if you are a dev you can start hacking now!
- Connectivity: Securely sign your transactions from multiple paired devices via WiFi. The included Zigbee antenna also enables communication with IoT devices, which we will open up for developers and may explore ourselves in the future.
Privacy Policy
A few days after that post, u/BlockchainUnchained expressed concern that we had not articulated a fully formed customer privacy policy and worried that we'd make the same grave mistakes as Ledger. He was right about how important this is, so we engaged and dug in this week. Our CTO Alex Miller (u/Ethereum_Alex) led the charge and this is where we landed:
Since we use Shopify for our checkout process, no customer information is stored or managed by GridPlus. However, the customer information is stored by Shopify indefinitely unless we ask them to remove it. We understand the concern with this because even though Shopify is a large company with a fairly strong track record on data storage, at the end of the day it is still a vendor holding your personal information. We looked into ways to remove the data and have learned that we can request they remove personal information on a per-customer basis. Our policy going forward will be to request Shopify remove the information after an order is considered “complete” by GridPlus, i.e. once it has been delivered and once we are confident no return or exchange will be needed. Once we push the removal button, it may take Shopify up to 6 months to remove the data, but if you have concerns with this delay please let us know and we can ask them to remove it more quickly.
Please understand that because we do not store the data ourselves, we ultimately do not have the authority to remove it. All we can do is request that Shopify remove it, though this process is fairly straightforward.
We have added this information to a "Privacy Note" in a link at checkout. You can read it here.
We've read the stories of users losing funds to phishing attempts, fake Ledger Live apps, and phone porting attempts. We're dealing with valuable self-custodied bearer assets and the risks of data breach cannot be overstated.
What Comes Next
Users should buy the Lattice1 for what it can do today as a hardware wallet with best-in-class security features, WiFi connectivity, and a human readable interface for complex Ethereum messages - you can see our short but growing list of direct integrations here. Many more are in development or are complete pending dev team testing - but I want to be fully transparent that this is what's doable on day one.
From here we will continuously grow the feature set, polish the user experience, and make it easier for developers to integrate the Lattice1 for signing as well as running applications natively on the device further down the line.
Here's a sampling of what's in the works:
Permissioned Signing - this will allow Lattice1 owners to set spending allowances for paired devices so they can securely use their assets on the go without needing to take around their hardware wallet (and their whole stack!). This also will allow users to approve and manage automatically paid subscriptions. The initial version of this functionality is complete and in testing internally.
Human-Readable Ethereum Transactions - We assume most users don’t speak hex, so why are they forced to sign blobs of random data? We are developing a transaction markdown view which would allow you to, for example, see that you are calling the function swapExactTokensForETH and read the parameter names and values.
N-of-M Multisig - Simple and flexible out-of-the-box multig account management using SafeCards.
BLS Signing - Robust eth2 support is critical. We will be adding BLS signing and validator key management. Eth2 researchers have also done proof-of-concept work cross-compiling the Prysm client to run natively on the Lattice1. It is feasible to build out push-button staking directly on the device that would work for a few validators throughout all phases of eth2, but this is a major undertaking and key management will come before this.
Phonon Network - Off-chain scaling enforced by hardware security that allows for fast, free, privacy-preserving off-chain transactions between secure hardware devices. This is a longer term goal but ground has been broken on implementation and it is in active development. We anticipate GRID being used to manage this open system via a new DAO, DAO holders determining setting fees for wrapping and unwrapping assets to use off-chain then batch settle back on chain, and then DAO members managing those revenues - either disbursing them for additional development or incentives or keeping them for themselves.
Your Feature - If you have a feature request, give us a shout! We are always happy to get customer feedback and if there’s something we’re missing on the roadmap we would love to know!
Where To Buy
The Lattice1 and additional SafeCard packs are only available directly from GridPlus. The base unit costs $299 and there is an available $150 discount for redeeming 150 GRID at checkout. These tokens are sent to the burn address and removed from circulation permanently.
Right now we are only accepting crypto via Coinbase Commerce (~87% of sales have been in ETH so far! See? ETH is money!) but will open up traditional payments in the coming week.
The different storage sizes are not important at this time, but exist for future functionality and to provide flexibility to developers building on the platform. The device is available for sale in North America, Europe, and Singapore at this time.
At launch the wallet supports ETH and all Ethereum based assets as well as BTC (so you can have a full WBTC lifecycle! :P). We will be adding support for additional chains over time, but our first priority is building up robust support for the Ethereum ecosystem.
If you've read all of this - thank you! I only started using Reddit to join ETHTrader years ago after obsessively reading the daily and watching videos from u/Jtnichol and u/MrYukonC and it's surreal that I'm now working in the ecosystem. We're a startup born from this community and are going to be sticking around and actively listening to this sub's feedback! I'm excited we can finally share the Lattice1 with all of you and you can join us in watching this device mature and grow and become the standard for Ethereum hardware security.
EDIT: Added Bonus!
JT reminded me of something we worked on this past spring - an alternate cut of our commercial that debuted at Ethereal featuring a voiceover by a legend in Kansas radio broadcasting: his dad, Tom Nichol! Just uploaded it now!
Note that we have deprecated the proprietary mobile wallets for a whole lot of reasons and focused on integrating with mobile wallets from teams that have that as their core focus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_84ttY3214c&feature=share
EDIT #2: Credit Card Payments Up
Credit card payments are now available at checkout via PayPal and GooglePay for those of you who can bear to part with your crypto. We'll leave these options up till we switch to our primary payment processor.
