BWallet (Trezor Clone)

A lesser known Trezor wallet clone, the wallet fully forked and copied the original Trezor One device. Was target of controversy among the Trezor community. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2tyier/bwallet_review_by_trezor_developer/

At a glance

Transparency

The hardware device uses similar architecture to Trezor One and looks akin to Archos Safe-T Mini.

The hardware and firmware but deviates from the original source code. According to Slush, a Satoshi Labs employee and Trezor develop, there were severe discrepancies found that make the device incompatible with the original Trezor Firmware and Tools. These discrepancies were not only code-wise but also on hardware-wise level, which makes the device difficult to use with more up-to-date tools.

// source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2tyier/bwallet_review_by_trezor_developer/

The repos in question completely clone the Trezor codebase, and are manually adding new improvements and their own optimizations. The forks do respect GPL-3.0 licensing set by Trezor, but the licensing had been upgraded to LGPL-3.0. This license is compatible with GPL-3.0.

https://github.com/BWallet/ https://github.com/BWallet/bwallet-mcu https://github.com/BWallet/bwallet-crypto https://github.com/BWallet/bwallet-mcu https://github.com/BWallet/bwallet-server https://github.com/BWallet/bwallet-common https://github.com/BWallet/bwallet-qrenc https://github.com/BWallet/bwallet-tools

The cloning prompted Trezor to drastically change their licensing of the device/firmware to Microsoft Reference License, which received a severe backlash from the community. They’ve reverted this decision shortly after.

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2u1wea/trezor_code_no_longer_lgplv3_but_now_more/ Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8966347 Source: http://digitalmoneytimes.com/satoshilabs-changes-trezor-software-open-source-license-reverts-again-after-community-feedback/

Software client

The device uses a modified Trezor client, which is incompatible with Trezor devices and also uses a modified communication protocol which makes the usage of the software device difficult with other software clients. Also the client has embedded supercookie tracking, which queries for HWIDs on the host device.

Optional features

Security

The device has same security options as Trezor One

Physical security

N/A

Privacy

The developers seems to have attempted to do very intrusive modifications to the firmware and architecture of the device. Sharing of HWIDs on host devices is a severe intrusion in privacy.

Non-hardware related

Manual

The most outrageous of the cloning attempt is that the developers globbed any mentions of Trezor and replaced it with their company name Bidixing, or BWallet hardware wallet name. Manual is same as for Trezor Model One dated from 2015.

// source: https://readthedocs.org/projects/bwallet-faq/downloads/pdf/latest/

Support

The device is abandonned.

Upgradability

The device is abandonned. Before abandonning the device had been upgraded inline with Trezor, with a small delay of a couple of days. The modifications were done by copypasting the code and not via proper merging of the mainline branch.