Kraken Rolls out Own Self-Custody Crypto Wallet

Kraken, the second-biggest U.S.-based crypto exchange, has developed its own wallet, catching up to its rival Coinbase in the product arena and joining a saturated field that also includes major players like MetaMask, Ledger and Trezor.

The new self-custodial "Kraken Wallet" was released Wednesday and will be available to both Kraken users and non-users. The wallet will initially support eight blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Optimism, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon and Dogecoin.

According to a blog post, the Kraken Wallet will be the first from a major exchange to be open-sourced. This means that developers can access and contribute to the code. Kraken will also pay developers that find vulnerabilities through their open-source grant program, so that they can improve the wallets in the event that there are bugs.

The wallet will collect the "absolute minimum amount of data to function as a wallet," according to Kraken, ticking off a privacy principle that is valued by many crypto users. "User activity is proxied through Kraken's own infrastructure, shielding IP addresses and preventing users' identity and location information from potential external exposure."

"Kraken has been telling people for more than ten years to self-custody their assets. We built Kraken Wallet on the principles central to the crypto space, such as user privacy and open source code," said Eric Kuhn, the Product Director for Kraken Wallet. "There's a lot of interesting things that are happening on-chain and we wanted a wallet that enables people to go and access these ecosystems."

(Source: CoinDesk)