Hey bitcoiners,
I am Lixin, CEO of Keystone hardware wallet. I was formerly the head of hardware wallet in Cobo, leading the team developing Cobo Vault.
Here is the
proof of not being a fake account.
I know some of you have tons of questions about the rebranding, so I am here to address that.
Here are some questions I was asked frequently, we can start from these questions.
Why rebrand from Cobo to Keystone?Back in September or October of 2020, the founders of Cobo told me that they don't want to do Cobo Vault product any more.
Reasons are -
1) There are very little product synergy between Cobo Vault and Cobo's main business Cobo Wallet and Cobo Custody. Both of them are custodial services. Cobo Wallet is for retail users while Cobo Custody is for enterprise users.
2) At that time Cobo Wallet was making tons of money because of the "DeFi Summer". They want to stop Cobo Vault and pivot all the dev resources to Cobo Wallet. Even though at that time Cobo Vault has broken even and growing very healthily.
We (the Cobo Vault team) were incubated by Cobo and ran as a subordinate company, separated from Cobo HQ for over 3 years. We were very dedicated to decentralized service and the hardware wallet product. We fully respect Cobo's decision but we can't work for Cobo Wallet.
So I bought out the Cobo's equity of the subordinate company (along with the intellectual properties). And the original Cobo Vault team left Cobo to create Keystone, which takes all the product legacies of Cobo Vault and also comes with some product improvements (details in a separate question).
For more details you can read -
https://blog.keyst.one/leaving-cobo-to-continue-the-cobo-vault-legacy-29bb2f8f026ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuRgGZTW82oCan I upgrade my Cobo Vault to Keystone firmware?I am sorry this is not allowed by Cobo. Even though Cobo Vault firmware is open sourced, the firmware needs to be signed by a specific key which is owned by Cobo team. We have made a migration firmware to upgrade Cobo Vault to Keystone firmware but Cobo refused to sign that firmware.
They are doing this because they want to convert those Cobo Vault users to Cobo Wallet.
Right now Cobo is
refunding Cobo Vault users. From their
refund application form, you can see that you need to register a Cobo Wallet account to get the refund. Also as an incentive, they will upgrade your Cobo Wallet account to VIP1.
For more details about the compatibility between Cobo Vault and Keystone -
https://twitter.com/BitcoinLixin/status/1405135132277706756Can I still use my Cobo Vault?If you have upgraded your Cobo Vault to BTC-only firmware (I believe most of the users here are doing so), and use it with BlueWallet, Specter, Sparrow or other 3rd party BTC wallet, you are good to go.
But please note that Keystone team can't fix any bugs or vulnerabilities of this product any more.
If you are using your Cobo Vault with multi-coin firmware and the mobile companion app by Cobo, we are not sure how long this companion app will be listed.
Thanks to the openness of QR code, right now we are launching a software companion app (in review now) to make Cobo Vault still usable.
Please note that these coins we can't support due to backend limitations - IOST, EOS, ETC, CFX, DCR, FIRO(XZC), Omni-USDT.
It's suggested that Cobo Vault users use Cobo's own companion app to move these coins to other wallets before using the companion app we offer.
The purpose of this companion app is just keeping Cobo Vault still functional. No new features will be added to this companion app.
What's the improvement of Keystone compared to Cobo Vault?There are mainly 3 improvements -
1) We moved the microSD card slot out so it's much easier to plug it.
2) We upgrade to
UR2.0 which is a much more advanced and robust QR protocol by Blockchain Commons team.
3) More integrations are coming (Casa and Caravan).
More details here -
https://blog.keyst.one/whats-new-for-keystone-a33f4e24c9cbCompensation for old Cobo Vault supporters1. You can get full refund by Cobo if you purchase your Cobo Vault after June 1st 2020 -
https://support.cobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407973083287-Cobo-Vault-Offline-Notice2. You can get 50% off for purchasing Keystone hardware wallet -
https://twitter.com/BitcoinLixin/status/1399701850983596044Thanks for your patience reading all the info. Please let me know if you have any further questions.