- Mycelium is one of the earliest crypto wallets in the industry, specifically made for Bitcoin.
- The wallet can be easily used as an app on a mobile device and does not require downloading the entire blockchain.
- It also uses many advanced security features and keeps upgrading itself with time to keep up with the emerging new e-wallet technologies.
Mycelium is one of the oldest cryptocurrency wallets for the storage and transfer of Bitcoin. It is a non-custodial wallet with advanced security features, and can be used on mobile phones for convenient access to Bitcoin anywhere. Being an industry player for so many years, it has maintained constant technical updates to provide for secure, private and easy crypto transfers.
Basic Features of Mycelium
Mycelium was established in 2008 for mesh networking between internet service providers, by a group of hardware engineers. But with Bitcoin’s launch in 2009, the company saw the potential of their services in the emerging blockchain network and switched to operate in the new field, with the first product– a crypto wallet launched in 2013. The company has since launched 3 products till date– wallet, entropy and gear.
The wallet can be used as an app over mobile phones. It is available for free download on iOS and PlayStore on Android. The source code of the app is open for review, but it’s not truly open code as it is not available to be freely used or modified by anyone. It has a very user-friendly and intuitive UI.
The wallet is a hot wallet and non-custodial type. Thus, the users are in full control of their keys. Each user is assigned a private key that they have to use every time they send or receive money. The keys can be stored on their offline devices as well.
Another security feature it provides is PIN where the user can generate a PIN while setting up the app. The PIN is to be used every time to log into the app, thereby, providing an additional layer of security. The PIN is entered by variable on-screen keyboard layouts to avoid pattern sniffing, i.e., identification of the PIN by a malicious attacker by fingerprint pattern on the keyboard.
The app can be easily installed and won’t occupy much space in the phone because it doesn’t require you to download the entire blockchain. The users’ private keys are stored on a separate device that Mycelium has no access to and are never broadcast on the network.
Transaction fees are determined by the amount of data to be processed, unlike other wallets that use a small percentage of the amount of money to be transferred as transaction fees. Here, the user can also decide among a choice of four what type of fees they want to pay. The types of payments fees differs based on the amount of time the user opts –
- Priority: Your transaction will be added to the next block, which means a time duration of 10 minutes.
- Normal: This would add to your block within 30 minutes.
- Economic: This will add to the block in 2 hours.
- Low priority: This will add to the block in 3 hours.
Advanced Security Features
The wallet is a Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet. In order to generate public and private keys of a user, the wallet first generates a random 12-word seed. It also serves as a backup in case a user loses their private keys. This seed is used to produce public keys for each transaction. Every subsequent key is produced based on the mathematical algorithm of the previous keys.
Another feature enables the connection of cold storage devices to store the assets. Mycelium is a hot wallet. But, it can be directly connected to cold wallets which can be used to manage and enable transactions by directly accessing the Mycelium app on a mobile phone. Examples include– Ledger, Trezor and KeepKey. This bypasses the need to connect the cold wallet to a PC first.
Another important feature for privacy of transactions is the option to use the TOR (The Onion Router) network for sending and receiving funds. TOR is an open and free network used for complete anonymity while surfing the web. It hides IP addresses while making any transaction. A great advantage with TOR is that it can be used in jurisdictions with very hard restrictions on cryptos.
