There are many Cardano wallets to choose from. Users in the Cardano ecosystem are really spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing a Cardano wallet. Each one has a different target audience and has different purposes depending on what you are wanting to do. Some are developed by community lead projects, while others are from official Cardano related companies such as Input-Output Global, the current company that is responsible for building much of the code that runs the Cardano blockchain, and Emurgo, the company that looks after much of the commercial interests for the Cardano blockchain.
As of the time of writing this part of the course, these are the options in regards to what wallets you can choose from as a user.
It is important to note that your wallet is actually on the blockchain itself, and all of these wallet apps are simply interfaces that look into that data on the blockchain. You can use multiple different wallet applications at the same time to view the same wallet data on-chain.
It is also important to note hardware wallet support. All of the wallets listed below support hardware wallet integration with devices such as a Ledger Nano or a Trezor. These give you an extra level of security by removing easy access to the private keys of your wallet from your computer device and creating a physical barrier with devices that are required for approving transactions.
Official Wallets
These wallets have created the companies that help start Cardano. These include:
Daedalus
A full node wallet that copies a copy of the entire Cardano blockchain to your computer. It’s resource-intensive and takes time to synchronise the first time you use it and subsequently each time you open it again as it synchronised with the Cardano blockchain again.
It is a great wallet in that it has wide desktop support for many operating systems and allows for a direct connection to the Cardano blockchain when trying to interact with it as quickly as possible, e.g for NFT mint drops.
Yoroi
A light browser extension and mobile-based wallet created by Emurgo. This Cardano wallet is great for users that don’t want to download the entire Cardano blockchain to their computer and instead connect to the blockchain via Emurgo’s maintained wallet server.
It’s light and fast but in more recent times has lacked further development to keep up with the demand of users. It also has sync issues from time to time due to the data query system the wallet uses which slows down queries to the data on the blockchain.
It still is a very popular wallet with an estimate of over 60% of users using it.
Project & Community-Based Wallets
These project-based and community wallets are created by private companies or parties which have raised funds through token sales or other investment methods. Most are well funded and have good support.
ADALite
NuFi
Cardwallet
GeroWallet
Typhon
Nami
Eternl
Future Cardano Wallet Courses
In later courses, you will be able to get a full overview of all of these wallets, their benefits and how to best use them.
