On Friday (May 6), Vacuumlabs, the Slovakian FinTech startup behind Cardano-powered DEX WingRiders, explained why its direct hardware wallet support means that it is able to offer safer trading than most other DEXes on Cardano.

What is WingRiders?

WingRiders is being developed by Vacuumlabs, which is “a software development company that builds modern full stack fintech solutions for startups, scale-ups and incumbent banks.” Vacuumlabs first got involved with Cardano in 2018 when its developers started work on Adalite, which has become the world’s popular web-based Cardano wallet:

In 2018, Vacuumlabs developers started an internal project to build the first Cardano light wallet. What was supposed to be a ‘weekend project’took weeks, but AdaLite was born. Since then, AdaLite has cemented itself as the leading web-based Cardano wallet, and along with it settled Vacuumlabs as a key development partner in the Cardano ecosystem.

Given the pedigree of its developers, perhaps it is not surprising to see them proudly call WingRiders “The DEX on Cardano.”

WingRiders lets its users “swap”, “earn” (by providing liquidity), and “fly” (presumably to the moon with the help of native token $WR).

Here is some information about WingRiders (from version 1 of its Lightpaper):

WingRiders is an Automated Market Maker (AMM) decentralized exchange (DEX) built on top of the Cardano using the eUTxO model on the main chain. The project is powered by VacuumLabs, one of the most widely respected developers in the Cardano space.

WingRiders’ objective is to be an infrastructure element for the whole Cardano ecosystem, with simple integration into any wallet or Dapp. Accessible via many platforms, supporting connectors and Hardware wallets such as Ledger or Trezor. The platform will be fully decentralized and trustless supporting swaps between Cardano native tokens. Plans exceed the AMM, L1 and Cardano itself.

Then, on April 12, the WingRiders team made the announcement that many Cardano community members had been impatiently waiting for.

With this launch, WingRiders brought two ERC-20 stablecoins to Cardano: $USDC and $USDT.

In its blog post about the launch, the WingRiders team said:

WingRiders’ aim is to complete the journey of ERC20 tokens to the Cardano mainnet. With this partnership in place (Milkomeda and Flint) this functionality will be available from WingRiders DEX mainnet launch. This means that it will be relatively easy in the future to begin to include the more popular and common ERC-20 token pairs with Cardano native tokens on the WingRiders platform.

WingRiders Can Communicate Directly With a ‘Ledger’ Hardware Wallet

In a blog post published on May 6, the WingRiders team started by reminding everyone that it was the first DEX on Cardano to offer “DIRECT hardware wallet (HW) support.”

The blog post started by pointing out that hardware wallets are safer than safer wallets:

“At the basic level, HW are safer than SW because SW are stored on your computer and are connected to the internet when your computer is, therefore they are vulnerable to any malware or virus, such as KPOT and others. They could potentially be impacted by hardware failure on your computer.”

Of course, the two oldest and best-known crypto hardware wallets are offered by Ledger and SatoshiLabs. WingRiders currently supports Ledger’s hardware wallets, but support for SatoshiLabs’ Trezor One and Trezor Model T wallets is coming.

Next, it mentioned that unlike most other Cardano-powered DEXEs, WingRiders does not need a software-based Cardano wallet, such as “Typhon Wallet“, to communicate with a hardware wallet:

So, if you trust your HW wallet provider, and you trust your DEX, what’s the issue? Well, in the case of many DEXes, the only way they can use them with HW wallets is through the use of third party software in between (for example a SW wallet like Typhon, or Eternel). Additionally, direct integration with a Hardware Wallet is convenient, it lets users interact with the WingRiders platform without the need for software… It’s not that we know of any issues with third party software, but we understand that adding complexity or additional layer adds risk, hence, direct integration was one way of reducing risk.

It went on to say what this direct hardware wallet support means for users:

Well, put simply, by using our direct integration method, it allows users to even access the WingRiders platform straight from any Android device, using their Ledger. (Don’t worry — Trezor support is coming too). We believe we are the first DEX on Cardano to provide direct integration and use of Android to its users.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.