In this interview we have the pleasure of talking to the team behind the most secure wallet in the world, NGRAVE. We discussed what was the motive behind the launch of the product and the features that truly make it unique and so much safer than the other products in the market. As well as the value provided by the current partners and how the funds raised through the crowdfunding will be deployed and finally their future goals.
In a nutshell tell us why we should all love NGRAVE?
NGRAVE isn’t just another hardware wallet company.
On the contrary. NGRAVE is a project that has set it as its mission to radically improve both YOUR security and YOUR ease of use when YOU are managing YOUR crypto. And we are the only player who provides a solution that looks at your security as it should be:
We look at your end-to-end journey as a user. We don’t provide a singular solution that fixes a few things. We offer a fully integrated answer including:
- A secure and user friendly hardware wallet.
- A secure, encrypted and recoverable cold backup.
- A we have upgraded security and UX in every single aspect of your user journey.
Security
We are dead serious about your security. It needs to be impeccable. Therefore, we went completely offline with our ZERO. We built the device from scratch with world leading experts to be tamper proof. And we certified it for EAL7, the highest security certification possible. This is how serious we are about your security. And we make the product in Belgium, to ensure top quality.
User Experience
We are also obsessed about your user experience. It has to be smooth, intuitive, and seamless. Using your hardware wallet shouldn’t be a drag anymore, you should actually even start looking forward to the next time you use it.
Customer Service
We believe in customer experience. We want you to have a great customer support, a possibility to engage even with the management team, and have a human connection. We want you to love our brand and feel an emotional connection to it.
Could you briefly tell us about the decision making process behind the launch of Ngrave?
The genesis story of NGRAVE starts with CTO Xavier Hendrickx entering the crypto space in 2013.
A year later, he is among many victims of the third largest hack in crypto history, when 850,000 bitcoins are misappropriated from the leading crypto exchange Mt. Gox. Valued at a whopping $450 million at the time, the amount of stolen bitcoin is worth an astounding $3 billion today.
Fast forward to April 2018 three friends brainstormed on the one question that keeps them up at night and that will lead to the founding of NGRAVE:
“Which solution in the market would we fully entrust with our very first till our very last bitcoin or other cryptocurrency?” No answer. So they decided to build it themselves.
Two months later, they are pitching their vision and first functional prototype to the world leading R&D institute for nanoelectronics, Imec, which is also known for taping the first atom-size chip back in 2018.
Over the summer, NGRAVE joined forces with COSIC, a leading research group on applied industrial cryptography and hardware security, known for a.o. successfully hacking the Tesla vehicles, twice.
The hardware wallet industry is already competitive, what features make Ngrave superior to other products?
We are the only full end-to-end solution, thinking about all the what-ifs in the user journey. We are not just offering a hardware wallet but also an advanced key backup solutions.
- The ZERO is fully offline at all times, generating your keys offline and never exposing them. There are no network connections (BLE, 4G, etc.) nor is there a need for connecting over USB. This removes all online attack vectors, whereas Ledger and Trezor still have an attack surface.
- Fully tamper proof and is designed from the ground up to withstand even the most extreme physical attacks.
- The only solution in the industry with an EAL7 security certification. It has earned this for the whole secure Operating System. Versus Trezor which has no certification, and Ledger which has only on the secure element level an EAL5+.
- Easy to use with its 4inch high quality edge-to-edge touch screen. Versus eg the Ledger Nano X with a 1inch touch screen which makes the device very cumbersome, and the Nano S which barely has a screen at all.
- So intuitive and easy that you always have your coins one tap away. No more installing different apps for your coins like with the Ledger, you just go to your dashboard and add whichever coin you want in seconds.
- The only end-to-end solution: whereas Ledger gives you a paper wallet, NGRAVE gives you the GRAPHENE, the most advanced keybackup in the industry: highly resilient stainless teel, encrypted and recoverable.
- The device communicates over super intuitive QR codes, which also make doing transactions quick and seamless.
We have innovated on every single step, eg our key generation process is more advanced than the status quo; our ZERO and GRAPHENE are too, etc. It’s the true mindset of apple: super secure yet with all complexity hidden behind an intuitive high quality touch screen experience
Your Indiegogo crowdfunding is already 733% over your initial goal. How do you plan to use those funds?
The Indiegogo campaign is geared towards raising the funds we require to be able to send out the first worldwide batch, batch “ZERO”. So we use the funds to build every single wallet ordered and thus to order the bill of material required for all these units. As it is expensive to come up with the funds up front, you are basically helping us deliver the first batch.
The European Commission is one of many big partners, how do they add value to Ngrave?
We went through a rigorous selection process to be included as one of the innovative projects in their Horizon 2020 program for innovative companies. We made it through the selection and received funding (in the form of grants) from the European Commission.
This also means we have received an official “seal of excellence” from the European Commission. We can now also apply for larger grants over time.
What are the main advantages of pre-order as supposed to waiting for it to be launched on your website?
For the user:
They get a steep discount as a reward for backing us early.
They get access to indiegogo-only perks, such as limited edition colors, and basically a form of long lasting gratitude from us to them; so we will keep them as special customers to us.
For NGRAVE:
It provides us the funding to go quicker to market with the first worldwide shipping
It allows us to leverage an existing platform for crowdfunding of tech products, that already has significant organic traffic
It allows us to identify demand in a “pull strategy” rather than a “push stragegy”, so potentially interested regions around the world can basically reveal themselves to us.
Every company has short, medium and long term goals. What can we expect to see from NGRAVE?
In the short term
To launch our B2C product worldwide
In the mid term
To partner up with exchanges and software wallets, to help them differentiate from their competitors by plugging in to our super secure cold wallet infrastructure. Their users can remain on their platfors but will now have the means to seamlessly, fast, and securely put their funds offline in a blink of an eye and get it back online immediately when needed.
In the long term
To be a trusted B2B player as well, helping exchanges in securing their back-end, helping the full tokenization trends to be better protected. And NGRAVE in the long term wishes to foster worldwide blockchain adoption by removing important hurdles such as security and usability.
Eventually, we want to be a top 3 worldwide player in any of these three mentioned verticals, and also be serving traditional finance players. Worldwide adoption of blockchain is important, because it empowers us to back the truth, instead of the one-sided plans of malicious dictators.
If you are interested to learn more about NGRAVE, please check out their website here
If you are interested to support the project buying the device through their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, click here.
#promoted
