Twenty answers, sorted into four chapters. If yours is missing, email press@phylaxwallet.com and we will add it.
If you've never used a hardware wallet, start here. We assume nothing and we hide nothing.
PHYLAX is an open-source hardware wallet — a small physical device that stores the private keys to your cryptocurrency on a dedicated offline device and signs transactions without ever exposing those keys to your computer or the internet. It looks like a USB-C dongle with a screen. It does one job and does it the same way it will be doing it in 2046.
It means the private keys controlling your crypto exist only on the PHYLAX device, in your physical possession. No exchange, no app, and no company — including us — can move your funds.
The trade-off is responsibility: if you lose both the device and your 24-word backup, the funds are gone. There is no customer service line that recovers them. That is the cost of sovereignty — and the same cost you accept when you put cash in a wall safe.
No — and that's deliberate. PHYLAX is Bitcoin-only. Every altcoin you add is another codebase, another signing scheme, and another path for a bug to reach your keys.
By supporting only Bitcoin, we keep the firmware small enough that the community can actually audit all of it. If you want a hundred chains, this isn't your wallet — and we're at peace with that.
A software wallet stores keys on a device that's also reading email, running browser plugins and connected to the internet. Any compromise of that machine — phishing, malware, supply-chain attack — can drain your wallet without your knowledge.
PHYLAX keys never touch a network. Signing happens on a dedicated offline device. You visually verify each transaction on a screen the host computer cannot see. Even if your laptop is fully owned, the worst it can do is propose transactions you can refuse.
No. Setup takes about ten minutes. The companion app walks you through it. You will need to write twenty-four words on the included titanium plate and store the plate somewhere safe — that is the only step that cannot be automated, because the moment we automate it, we are storing it for you.
One PHYLAX device · one braided USB-C cable · one titanium seed-recovery plate · one stylus for engraving · a setup card with a QR code to the verification flow · and one sticker. No glossy quick-start brochure, no upsell card, no warranty pamphlet you'd throw away.
The trust model. What we defend against. What we admit we cannot.
No. There is no network interface — no Bluetooth, no Wi-Fi, no NFC, no cellular. The companion desktop app does not collect telemetry, and that promise is enforced by the open-source build: the network code is auditable and reproducible. Run a packet capture during a session. You will see nothing leave your machine that you did not initiate.
Because a secure element is a closed, proprietary chip — you have to trust the manufacturer's word about what happens inside it, and you can never audit it. That's a black box sitting at the heart of a device whose entire job is to be trustworthy.
PHYLAX stores keys on a general-purpose microcontroller running fully open firmware you can read, build and verify line by line. We'd rather be transparent than ask you to trust a chip none of us can inspect.
The trade-off, stated honestly: a determined attacker with physical possession and lab equipment has an easier target than a certified secure element. We mitigate with PIN, passphrase and an encrypted seed — and we tell you the trade-off instead of hiding it.
We don't run a paid bug bounty yet. We're a small team without the budget for one, and we'd rather say that than advertise a reward we can't pay — if that changes, you'll read it here first. What we do offer is credit: every reporter is named in the disclosure unless they'd rather not be. Disclosure is public — every issue, severity and fix lands in /phylax/audits. The device receives signed firmware patches via USB; the bootloader only accepts firmware signed by the maintainers. We have already commissioned three third-party audits and published every finding, including the embarrassing ones.
The firmware and hardware are published under GPL v3 and CERN OHL-S v2. Anyone can rebuild and re-flash a PHYLAX device without our involvement.
The recovery flow uses industry-standard BIP-39 and SLIP-39 — your seed phrase recovers your funds on any compatible wallet, by any manufacturer, ever. The standards are older than us and will outlast us.
Yes. Two independent tamper-evident seals on the package, plus a build you verify yourself at first boot: clone the firmware repo, build it, and confirm the hash on your device matches the published release. If a seal or the hash looks wrong, do not initialise. We replace it at our cost.
If someone physically coerces you, no piece of hardware will protect you alone. PHYLAX includes plausible-deniability features — a duress PIN that opens a decoy wallet with a small balance, and a 25th passphrase that exists only in your head and lives behind no record on the device.
We will never claim a device can defeat human violence. We can only minimise the data on the device for a coercion attack to extract.
Why we publish everything, and what that means in practice.
Firmware: GPL v3 — copyleft, all modifications must be published. Hardware: CERN OHL-S v2 — share-alike open-source hardware. Documentation: CC BY 4.0. Brand assets: CC BY-ND 4.0. Every license choice is the most-permissive option that still protects the openness of derivatives.
Yes. The schematics, BOM, firmware and assembly instructions are public. You will need access to a manufacturer that can solder fine-pitch surface-mount parts, but the rest is solo-buildable. We publish a "self-build" guide annually that lists the lowest-cost fabs and known parts substitutions.
This is intentional. A device only one company can make is not really open.
Reproducible builds. Clone the repo, run make verify, and your machine will produce a binary with the exact same SHA-256 hash as the firmware on your device. If the hashes don't match, do not connect funds to that device. The verification flow is documented step-by-step in the docs.
Every day. 142 contributors have already merged code into the project. We use a standard fork-and-PR workflow, with a Contributor Covenant code of conduct and a published security-review process for cryptographic changes. New chain support is the most common community contribution — we review it for signing-correctness and merge it.
When the device arrives, how it gets to you, what happens if it breaks.
Production starts Q4 2026, with first units in Q1 2027. We publish weekly production-line updates as we build — including PCB yield, component lead times and assembly photos. No silence between prototype and ship.
At launch: all EU, UK, US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and most of LATAM. We deliberately chose components without ITAR or US-export restrictions so the list will grow rather than shrink. Verify your local rules before pledging — hardware wallets are legal everywhere we ship today, but laws change.
Two years on hardware. Firmware support is indefinite — there is no planned obsolescence and the device will receive security patches for as long as its core components remain available (currently committed to 2034). Right-to-repair is guaranteed: we sell replacement parts and publish repair guides.
Your seed phrase is what protects you, not the device. Recover onto a new PHYLAX, a replacement we send, or any other BIP-39 compatible wallet. The whole point of the open standard is that the hardware is replaceable; the keys are the asset.
If your question wasn't covered, email us and we'll add it. This list grows from the questions people actually send.