As part of our Methodology, we ask:
Published code doesn’t help much if the app fails to compile.
We try to compile the published source code using the published build instructions into a binary. If that fails, we might try to work around issues but if we consistently fail to build the app, we give it this verdict and open an issue in the issue tracker of the provider to hopefully verify their app later.
The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.But we also ask:
Bitcoin wallets are complex products and Bitcoin is a new, advancing technolgy. Projects that don’t get updated in a long time are probably not well maintained. It is questionable if the provider even has staff at hands that is familiar with the product, should issues arise.
This verdict may not get applied if the provider is active and expresses good reasons for not updating the product.
The Analysis ¶
This does not represent a full code review.
The provider of this Freewallet reached out to us to stress that freewallet.io was not the same as freewallet.org which is spamming Google Play with many wallets and we have reviewed three of those here, too:
He says that his wallet is non-custodial and open source and indeed we see those same claims on Google Play.
On the website we read:
Open Source
FreeWallet Mobile is open-source, and available for anyone to fork or review, so you know that it works exactly the way that it is supposed to.
and indeed we find a repository. It had no changes for two years and also Google Play does not report any changes since March 2019 but this looks like open source.
Unfortunately there is no build instructions so we cannot reproduce the app and it remains not verifiable.
(lw)
Do your own research!
Try out searching for "lost bitcoins", "stole my money" or "scammers" together with the wallet's name, even if you think the wallet is generally trustworthy. For all the bigger wallets you will find accusations. Make sure you understand why they were made and if you are comfortable with the provider's reaction.
If you find something we should include, you can create an issue or edit this analysis yourself and create a merge request for your changes.