Monero is a privacy-centered cryptocurrency, built on the principles of blockchain technology. It was initiated to ensure user-privacy is kept at the heart of all development. And that is precisely what makes development on the platform much more complex and time-consuming. This complexity had formed a gap in the wallet market, as most developers did not come forward to develop user-centric wallets that supported Monero. That is until Cake Wallet!

What is Monero and Why is it so complex?

Monero (XMR) is a privacy-centric cryptocurrency that originally forked from Bytecoin. Quickly, Monero received considerable fame and became one of the highest-ranked cryptocurrencies by market cap.

Monero hides the sender’s identity through Ring Signatures, transaction amount through Bulletproofs, and receiver’s identity through Stealth Addresses. Analysis of the Monero, XMR, blockchain would reveal nothing more than a cryptographic hash of the transaction. Monero’s fame can be attributed to its internal complexity.

The Monero team actively tries to make the project as decentralized as possible. One of the ways for doing this is to discourage ASIC mining, as it could bring centralization to those who hold more hash power.

If one has followed the development of Monero over the years, they might understand that the community behind developing Monero is highly decentralized and so the process happened quite slowly. In the 4+ years since its inception, support for Monero grew slowly but surely. There was a time when mobile wallets were absolutely non-existent.

But as the ecosystem grew and began to thrive, a wallet for mobile devices started to emerge and won over the Monero developer community. Let us now look at the first mobile wallet that emerged with support for XMR.

Cake Wallet – The First Fully Functional Monero Wallet

Released in 2018, Cake Wallet was the first mobile open source wallet for Monero on iOS.

In April 2018, the developers of Cake Wallet announced that Cake Wallet has finally gained approval and is now listed on Monero’s official website. Initially, the wallet was released for the iOS platform as there was a competitor available for Androids. In January of 2020, Cake Wallet also released an Android version of the Wallet.

During its pre-release, the wallet’s code was closed source, which was highly discouraged by the community who wanted all development to be open for scrutiny to all users. And so, in February 2018, the Cake Wallet team took the community’s feedback on board and open-sourced the code, thus powering the wallet.

It is very important to know that the development team behind Cake Wallet has worked immensely hard in making sure all of their plans are aligned with the Community’s best interest. For this reason, they had to conduct several changes, work with the Monero community, and make sacrifices just to ensure that they lead the market.

The mobile app is a wallet that allows you to access the Monero network without having to download all the network data. Also, you have possession of your private keys, thus giving you full control over your funds.

As per the official website, some of the major features of the wallet include:

Store, send and receive Monero

Create multiple new wallets

Hold your own private keys

Restore wallets from block-height or date

Set your transaction speed

Choose your own currency

Set your own node/daemon

Face ID

Exhange Monero and other cryptocurrencies within the wallet.

What Sets Cake Wallet Apart

Control your seed/keys

“Not your keys, not your coins” is a saying that gets passed around a lot in this blockchain space. Cake Wallet takes this principle very seriously. Users of the cake wallet are given full ownership of the funds that they store. A mnemonic phrase is provided to any user, which can be used to restore the wallet at any point.

In-Wallet Exchange

Cake Wallet can be considered as the safest and most popular Monero wallet for transferring and storing. One of the additional features of the wallet includes easily exchanging Monero to other cryptocurrencies within the Wallet, without the hassles of an exchange. The supported cryptocurrencies, for now, include BTC, LTC, ETH, BCH, DASH, USDT, EOS, XRP, TRX, BNB, ADA, XLM, and NANO and more are on their way.

Adjustable Transaction Speed

Cake Wallet also allows its users to adjust the speed at which transactions can be sent. Users can set slow, normal, or fast for the transaction.

Biometric Authentication

Like most top of the line applications, the Wallet also allows to set-up biometric authentication on their devices. Users can set up fingerprint lock or Face ID lock, depending upon the device they use. This service is open to both the iOS and Android devices. Interestingly, Cake Wallet is the first mobile wallet in the Monero community to support biometric authentication.

Wallet backup

To decrease the chances of losing the wallet, either due to loss of device or change of device, users can back up their wallets through the iCloud and other locations. By backing up their wallets and linking them to the device’s account, users can reopen the wallet on another device by logging in through their iCloud and other accounts

Useful Links

Cake Wallet | Monero | iOS Link | Android Link | Source