From Idea to Reality: The First Lattice1 Hardware Wallets Have Shipped
The GridPlus cofounders began planning and designing the Lattice1 hardware wallet in 2017 and this week customers got their hands on the first wave of preordered units. Nearly three years of development is an eternity in crypto, yet in that time nothing else arose to fulfill the goals we set out to achieve.
With Lattice1s steadily rolling off the factory line, we want to share a bit about why we set out to build it, what it took to get here, and what to expect next.
What Is The Lattice1 and Who Is It For?
The Lattice1 is a next generation hardware wallet designed to replace the legacy hardware security options available today. It’s built for the current era in which people use cryptocurrency and decentralized systems every day instead of just storing them.
It’s for crypto power users, mainstream users who want ease of use, and developers who can use its unique toolset for providing security for their blockchain applications or want to deploy to a network of highly secure systems.
Why switch to the Lattice1?
- Better Interface: Easily read exactly what you’re signing on a 5" TFT touchscreen.
- More Secure: Designed to be resistant to physical intrusion attempts from state-level actors. Mitigates attack vectors from edge cases that other hardware wallets do not take into account.
- Extensible: Back up your account to a PIN-protected SafeCard instead of keeping your seed phrase in a sock drawer. Firmware updates will enable support for easy N-of-M hardware multisig using SafeCards.
- Programmable: The Lattice is a Linux mini-computer with the general and secure compute environments segregated at the component level. This makes it possible to use permissioned signing for subscriptions or to automate processes such as signing as a proof-of-stake validator.
- Connectivity: Securely sign your transactions from multiple paired devices via WiFi. The included Zigbee antenna enables communication with IoT devices.
Wait, I Thought You Guys Were an Energy Company? I Don’t Live In Texas…
The team’s energy plan inspired the Lattice1 as we know it today, but it was always intended to be a general purpose device to enable new ways to securely use digital bearer assets. In 2017, Mark D’Agostino told CoinTelegraph:
“The Grid+ Agent is a cryptocurrency enabled general-purpose IoT device. We are using it in the electricity markets first, but as we move forward it has many potential applications in IoT as well as in distributed ledger systems. Electricity is really just the first application that will enable us to bring Blockchain to the masses.”
GridPlus Energy is a wholly owned subsidiary based out of Houston that has been live for two years and continues to grow. GridPlus, Inc. is the parent technology company and will explore the many potential applications for the Lattice1 and support external developers.
The energy plan required a secure, always-on, internet-enabled device that could communicate with IoT devices and automatically provide cryptographic signatures. Nothing else fits that bill.
The team always saw its use by energy customers as a trojan horse for mainstream adoption because it made using this technology intuitive for regular people who care about its real-world utility and not the technology under the hood.
Getting To This Point
After spinning out of ConsenSys and incorporating GridPlus in 2017 the cofounders packed up and headed to Austin, Texas. The next three years involved many iterations of the original design, experimenting with different molded enclosures and formats, and a complete redesign after a core component in an earlier completed version was unexpectedly discontinued by the manufacturer.
Sometimes it was difficult to communicate the nature of the work the engineering team was focused on to those following the project and we seemed quiet, but the team was showing up every day grinding their way through challenge after challenge.
We dropped Lattices onto hard surfaces again and again to see what it took to accidentally trigger the tamper circuit. Each time there were changes after initial regulatory approval, Karl had to visit an anechoic chamber to measure radio frequency emissions.
In a rapidly evolving industry where revolutionary software ideas can materialize into hit products in just days, hardware seems brutally hard. When you’re debugging a vexing low level firmware issue for days it can be easy to lose sight of your initial vision. But now we’re on to the exciting part: sharing it with the world.
We hope to be pleasantly surprised with how external devs can push this hardware and use it in unique and exciting ways. One of our first dev units went to eth2 researcher Jonny Rhea — his first question was “Do u guys mind if I hack on it some?” In a few days he was running 64 Prysm eth2 validators on it. The Lattice1 is a unique toolkit and its utility will grow with time.
What Comes Next
The very first users will find the Lattice1 to be an intuitive hardware wallet, but after release more options and functionality will become steadily available for signing, additional assets will be supported, and new features will continue to be pushed out via painless over-the-air firmware updates.
Over the next few months users will be seeing more and more integrations with popular Ethereum apps and services. We have been working with several teams on incorporating Lattice1 signing — several integrations are done and are pending the developers receiving units for final testing.
If you’re a developer using the Blocknative Onboard.js library to provide wallet connectivity you can add Lattice1 support in minutes with a few lines of code and we’ll be happy to help. Alex is working on integrating with the popular web3-react library as well. Teams should reach out to us directly and we’ll do the heavy lifting to get Lattice1 users set up with your DApp.
One of the next major milestones will be Phonon Network implementation in 2021. Phonon is an open source standard for using hardware security to wrap cryptoassets and facilitate off-chain transfers via fast, free, privacy-preserving transactions. Users only pay when wrapping assets and then batch depositing back onto the chain of their choice. PhononDAO is planned to be governed using the GRID token and will allow users to oversee the management of this system.
Conclusion
Stay tuned for launch details, the official referral sales program, integrations, Phonon Network news, new features, and a lot more! We’re very excited to share everything we’ve been building and are looking forward to getting feedback directly from our users.
Keep up to date by following GridPlus on Twitter and come ask questions and speak with us directly on Telegram and Reddit.
Disclaimer
The forward-looking statements in this update are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties which are subject to change over time. There are many risk factors, including those relating to blockchain and cryptographic technology generally, as well Grid+’s business, operations and results of operations, that could cause our actual results or developments anticipated by us not to be realized or, even if substantially realized, to fail to achieve any or all of the benefits that could be expected therefrom, We reserve the right to change the plans, expectations and intentions stated herein at any time and for any reason, in our sole and absolute discretion, and we undertake no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future developments or otherwise. ACCORDINGLY, WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT RELY ON, AND DO NOT MAKE ANY FINANCIAL DECISION OR INVESTMENT BASED ON, THE STATEMENTS CONTAINED IN THIS UPDATE — INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY SELLING OR TRADING OF GRID TOKENS, ETHER OR ANY OTHER CRYPTOGRAPHIC OR BLOCKCHAIN TOKEN, OR THE SECURITIES OF ANY COMPANY.
