Daedalus Wallet

The “official” wallet of Cardano, created by IOHK. Daedalus is an open-source, full node wallet available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Daedalus was launched in 2017 by IOHK alongside the launch of the Cardano mainnet and has since gone through several improvements as it grows with the Cardano ecosystem. The functionalities of the Daedalus wallet include:

Sending, receiving, and storing ADA, NFTs, and tokens
Staking to stake pools and browsing a list of stake pools with various ways of searching them
Registering to vote -and then voting- in Project Catalyst
Multi-sig transaction signing
Hardware wallet support for Trezor and Ledger wallets

Users can choose the currency the current value of their ADA and other tokens are displayed in and there are also themes, currently 6, allowing users to personalize their Daedalus wallet.

Daedalus also features a newsfeed, from IOHK, that is collapsible into a sidebar. What IOHK defines as “vital” news may cover the whole screen.

Industry

wallet

Tags

full node wallet

delegate stake

open source

non-custodial

multi-sig

catalyst voting registration

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Author

builtoncardano

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Dev Tool Insights

Glossary

Wallet

Basic Wallet Science Cryptocurrency wallets function through a pair of cryptographic keys, one public and one private. The public key is the wallet’s address, the private key is securely stored in the wallet. Both are required to send an asset from the wallet.

Wallets are split into two categories: custodial and non-custodial. With a custodial wallet a 3rd party, e.g. an exchange or service provider, possesses the wallet’s private key. With a non-custodial wallet you alone possess the private key. Whoever controls the private key controls the wallet’s funds. Hence the mantra: Not your keys not your coins. A wallet’s security can also be increased by storing it on a hardware wallet.

Wallets are either light or full node. Full node wallets download the whole Cardano blockchain, interacting directly with it, and are less affected by network congestion than light wallets, which require other nodes to send their transactions. Full node wallets exist on computers, light wallets exist on devices and as browser extensions.

A basic wallet allows for the viewing of its balance and the sending and receiving of funds, but wallets can have many other functions, including: delegating the wallet’s funds to a stake pool, registering to vote in Project Catalyst, displaying the wallets NFTs, hardware wallet integration, and using integrated DeFi services.

NFT

NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token. An NFT is a unique token that cannot be changed, copied, or destroyed.

Non-fungible is the opposite of fungible, fungible means: “replaceable by an identical item”. For this reason NFTs are regularly described as irreplaceable.

An NFT is a blockchain based -also called as tokenized- representation of a digital or real world asset that can be used to verify authenticity as well as ownership.

DeFi

DeFi stands for Decentralized Finance, and utilizes smart contracts to automate financial services and instruments that traditionally require a middleman.

DeFi enables a globally accessible financial system, without the entry requirements demanded by traditional, also known as centralized, financial services; a new system without borders or traditional barriers of entry.

DeFi allows people with small amounts of excess capital to “become the bank” and deposit their funds into a protocol to provide liquidity and generate returns in the form of yields from the financial activities conducted on the protocol.

It is important to note that DeFi is a fledgling industry. It equally important to note that there is little to no regulation, meaning there is no consumer protection i.e. if funds are lost by a protocol then the user looses their funds with little to no hope of getting them back.

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