Note that on iOS devices, third party apps are forced to use Webkit for web rendering. That means that other browsers like Chrome or Brave on iOS will likely be subject to these same restrictions.

What does this mean for Burner Wallets?

Mainly, this emphasizes what we already knew: Burner Wallets (in their current form) aren’t good for holding assets long-term. This change currently only affects Safari users, but it’s possible other browsers may follow suit at some point. If you’re keeping money in a Burner Wallet, you should back up that key.

Currently, this won’t affect the primary use cases of Burner Wallets: events (ex. ETHDenver, Dappy hours) and demoing new technology (Fuel Burner, Dai Card).

Events such as hackathons and dappy hours take place over hours or days, nobody is expected to keep using their BuffiDai tokens after the event is over. Furthermore, many of these events use unbacked, “play-tokens” anyways, so no value would be lost.

How can Burner Wallets adapt?

Just because most Burner Wallets today aren’t used for storing significant funds, doesn’t mean that wallets can’t eventually hold real money.

So how do we work around Apple’s new restrictions?

Thankfully, there is one exception to this new rule:

…the seven-day cap on script-writable storage is gated on “after seven days of Safari use without user interaction on the site.” That is the case in Safari. Web applications added to the home screen are not part of Safari and thus have their own counter of days of use.

Websites added as “apps” to the home screen get a pass.

Unfortunately, there’s no “easy” way to prompt a user to add a website to their home screen, users must find the button hidden inside Safari’s “share” panel. Future Burner Wallets will likely display warnings to Safari users, prompting them to add the wallet to the home screen & secure their funds.