Company Name: Base Device
Founder: Zach Herbert, Ken Carpenter, Jacob Johnston
Established date: March 2020
Headquarters: Boston, Massachusetts and remote locations (worldwide)
Amount of Bitcoin held by the Treasury: The foundation holds Bitcoin but has not disclosed how much.
Number of employees: 24 full-time employees
Website: https://foundation.xyz/
Public or private? private
Zach Herbert wants to make self-custody of Bitcoin available to everyone.
This is, Base Devicea company that makes bitcoin hardware and software wallets, has spent the past four years building bitcoin technology that is not only secure and open source, but also as easy to use as products from Apple, a brand Herbert loves (or at least loved — read on).
The Foundation’s flagship product is a hardware wallet called passportHerbert told Bitcoin Magazine that what sets the company apart in the competition is its “combination of design and user experience.”
He added that the foundation also has “very strong principles that we try to uphold around open source, privacy and freedom.”
Foundation’s strength lies in the balance it has struck between staying true to its philosophy and creating a product that’s relatively easy for even bitcoin newbies to use.
“I think you have to define those principles from day one and really understand why you’re doing what you’re doing,” Herbert said of how he and his team strike that balance.
“I don’t think it’s at all inconsistent with wanting to create the best designed devices and products possible,” he added.
Foundation Products
Foundation is best known for its hardware wallet, the aforementioned Passport.
The device looks like a premium version of a feature phone but with a higher resolution screen.
One of Passport’s selling points is that it is air-gapped, meaning it doesn’t need to be connected to an internet-connected device, further protecting users’ private keys.
When it comes to private keys, Foundation has developed a more simplified method of backing them up compared to the traditional method of writing them down: Passport allows users to store their seed phrase on an industrial-grade microSD card that comes with the device.
“We think it will speed up adoption because people don’t have to write down 12 or 24 words,” Herbert said.
Signing a transaction with Passport is also much easier than with most competing devices: just scan a QR code using your Passport and your mobile phone to sign.
The passport is the foundation’s Special Envoy The mobile app also functions as a standalone hot wallet.
Again, to ease user onboarding, Herbert and the Foundation team created a system that allows users to start using the app securely almost instantly.
“We’ve created something called Magic Backup, which actually stores the seed in iCloud Keychain or the Android equivalent, and it’s just for the hot wallet on your phone,” Herbert explained.
“The great thing about Magic Backups is that you’re onboarded within 60 seconds of downloading the app for the first time, and you can import your own seed or create and save your own seed whenever you want,” he added.
“We try to obfuscate things that may be complicated, but we do things based on industry standards.”
He acknowledged that this is not as secure as recording or writing down your seed phrase on a microSD card, as storing your seed phrase offline is more secure than storing it online, and said hot wallets are only intended for minimal funds – the same amount you would hold in a physical wallet in cash.
Another feature of Envoy is that it can be used to IdentificationAccess free P2P marketplaces like Hodl Hodl and Bisq within the app and send your purchases directly to hot or cold storage.
🎬 Start your Bitcoin journey!
Avoid the hassle of KYC and take control with our P2P Bitcoin platform.
At Envoy, you’ll find the best P2P platform to help you realize a truly independent future.
We are built to support your journey every step of the way 🧡 pic.twitter.com/hbCeAOCWZl
— Foundation (@FOUNDATIONdvcs) July 8, 2024
Part of the Foundation’s goal in building Passport and Envoy the way it did was to cater to bitcoin holders at all levels.
“We try to create products that our passionate users not only use and love, but are also comfortable recommending to their friends and family,” Herbert explains.
Why a Wallet?
Herbert entered the Bitcoin industry in 2013 during the early days of hardware wallets.
“When I first got interested in Bitcoin, hardware wallets were just starting to become popular,” Herbert recalls.
He previously used a software wallet called Armory. Hard to use To say the least.
“The recommendation is to install Armoury on an air-gapped computer, ideally removing the Wi-Fi card and using it just to run Armoury,” Herbert says. Essentially, your computer becomes a hardware wallet.
Herbert said that at the time, seed phrases did not exist and the private key had to be printed out on a separate piece of paper. Shamir Backup system.
While Herbert is well aware that wallets are significantly easier to use than they were in 2013, he still finds most hardware wallets unnecessarily difficult to operate. He says some hardware wallet manufacturers pride themselves on making difficult-to-use products, claiming that learning to use them is a kind of “rite of passage.”
Through the Foundation, Herbert wanted to create technology that was more “approachable and thoughtful.”
My love-hate relationship with Apple
Herbert’s vision for the Foundation also includes building more products that sync like Passport and Envoy.
“We want to be the Apple of the industry,” Herbert said. “We want to create products where the hardware, software and services are all tightly intertwined and work together seamlessly.”
Herbert said the foundation plans to launch a “potentially new category of product” by the end of the year.
Could it be the Bitcoin-centric phone he asked his followers on X?
What features would you like to see in a Bitcoin-centric smartphone? https://t.co/8dIon71apI
— Zach Herbert (@zachherbert) May 18, 2024
Don’t hold your breath.
There are a few things preventing such a device from reaching the market, and ironically, one of them is Apple.
“Mobile phones are definitely on the list,” Herbert said of the project he’d like to work on, “but I think that’s a 10-year project, because I think we need to go further as a company and I think we need to go further as an industry.”
Another problem is that Apple is hindering the adoption of decentralized technology, an issue Herbert wrote in a blog post: “My love for Apple is fading” In 2020.
“(Apple’s) app restrictions are very bad for the (bitcoin) industry,” Herbert said.
“A really basic and simple example is Asymmetric “Payments on an iPhone require tap-to-pay with NFC. The reason your bitcoin wallet can’t tap-to-pay with NFC is because Apple doesn’t allow it. Only Apple Pay can use NFC,” he added.
Herbert also said that Apple is interfering with the design of bitcoin mobile wallets, which is affecting the quality of bitcoin mobile wallets not only for Apple users but also for Android users.
“More than half of your users are iOS users, and you generally don’t want to give them a completely separate Android experience,” Herbert explains. “No matter what Apple ends up doing, even if Android does more, you’re still going to end up being subject to the limitations that Apple sets.”
So if the Foundation is to continue its quest to become the Apple of the bitcoin industry, it will need to get Apple out of the way.
What’s next for the Foundation?
Apart from the idea of creating mobile phones in the distant future, the foundation is also looking into implementing and developing other technologies.
Herbert said the foundation Taproot Multisig In the coming months.
“Once we see active use of it in the wild, we will add support for it,” Herbert said, noting that Passport already offers a great multisig experience.
Meanwhile, the Foundation maintains Samurai Whirlpool. Post Mix Extension It runs on Passport and allows Passport users to connect to their Sparrow Wallet and coinjoin their bitcoin directly into cold storage with the click of a button.
The Whirlpool Postmix extension for Passport will not be removed 🌀
We look forward to seeing Whirlpool and Samurai back once they are exonerated and the charges are dropped.#FreeSamurai pic.twitter.com/SltJpDThFv
— Foundation (@FOUNDATIONdvcs) May 9, 2024
Sparrow has discontinued this service, Samurai Wallet Developer ArrestedHerbert and the foundation team believe that if the Samurai developers are found not guilty, the wallet will be reinstated.
“We believe that Samurai Team is not breaking any laws,” Herbert said. “We’ve donated half of our Bitcoin to their legal defense.”
Herbert also noted that the foundation was on the verge of adding Whirlpool functionality to the Envoy mobile app before news of the Samurai developers’ arrests broke.
And finally, the Foundation lightning Envoy makes sending and receiving Bitcoin as fast and cheap as possible.
“Bringing Lightning to Envoy will enable us to deliver the best user experience,” Herbert said.
“We are able to obfuscate a lot of the complexities that go on behind the scenes and make the transfer flow from lightning to cold storage, or from hot wallet to cold storage, simple. You just have to tap a transfer button in the app, just like you would transfer money from your checking account to your savings account in your online banking interface,” he added.
It’s clear that Herbert and the team at the Foundation have no shortage of ideas or vision.
Considering how far the company has come since it was founded just four years ago, it’s not hard to imagine that future versions of its hardware and software, and the new products it develops, will be even easier to use and more dynamic in the future.
“We’re just scratching the surface of what bitcoin wallets can do,” Herbert concluded. “We’ll see rapid progress over the next few years.”
