Cake wallet - Requesting honest reviews

[LoyceV]

I 've never heard of EUR stablecoins. What are they?

Banks are slow in adopting new technologies because they don't like taking those risks. They work with their decades old systems and would rather continue to do so as long as they can. They are also heavily regulated and bringing in something like a bank-native stablecoin would require a lot of work and compliance on their part.

There's a development in this area: ING and 8 other European banks are going to create their own stable coin, working in a new Dutch company under supervision of the Dutch National Bank (DNB). I like the analyses in the Dutch Cryptocast, and indeed, this involved many people within the bank because of compliance. They also said that Tether is the most profitable company on earth per employee, which is no doubt the reason many others are trying to create their own stable coins.
Banks must fear being replaced by tech companies, even though the payment infrastructure in euro countries is quite good. Don't get me wrong, I don't like banks and I don't like the foundation of the euro coin, but when touch my debit card to a machine in a shop and instantly remove it, the payment is processed before I can store the card again. So I don't really see a reason to switch to (euro) stable coins for payments.

[Lucius]

~snip~
Banks must fear being replaced by tech companies, even though the payment infrastructure in euro countries is quite good. Don't get me wrong, I don't like banks and I don't like the foundation of the euro coin, but when touch my debit card to a machine in a shop and instantly remove it, the payment is processed before I can store the card again. So I don't really see a reason to switch to (euro) stable coins for payments.

You don't even have to have a physical card, it's enough to add a virtual card to your mobile wallet and have NFC turned on when you hold your smartphone to the POS device. I assume that the EURO stablecoin in question is some kind of competition with the digital euro that is increasingly being talked about as an effort by the EU to compete with large card companies such as Visa/Mastercard.

It has been several years since the ECB, under the leadership of Christine Lagarde, has taken a harsh stance towards stablecoins (especially US-based ones), and all that we have been reading about lately is clearly a sign that the ECB wants something that it can control.

[Pmalek]

Despite how convenient it could be for people who like to use the built-in swap feature of the wallet they use, it is not something i do, neither would i recommend it. Simply because you do not get to choose the exchange that your transaction will be routed through, and if you are like Exodus wallet users, then good luck to you if your swap is routed through N.Exchange. The chances are high that your swap may not go through, your funds confiscated and you have to wait months for their investigation to be completed.

I know Cake wallet is a far better wallet. However, i am sure users don't get to choose which exchange their tx would be routed through, right? So there are a few on that list that could confiscate your funds and request for kyc, so yeah...

When we are talking about Cake Wallet, you have control over the swap services that you want to use when exchanging crypto. When you go to the swap screen, it's set to automatic by default. That means, all exchanges are selected and the software will show you the best rate, regardless which swap service offers it. But you can tap on the swap providers and untick those you don't want, leaving those you prefer ticked. Then, you will only see the best rate from those that remain enabled. 

[Pmalek]

Cake Wallet devs have released version 5.5.0 of their software with a few interesting updates and new features.

- Support for Trezor and Bitbox hardware wallets: Cake Wallet now supports Trezor and Bitbox in its Android app. iOS integration is coming soon.
- Support for Ethereum L2, Base Network.
- Support for xStocks: Cake Wallet provides access to xStocks, a tokenized stocks platform on Ethereum and Solana. These aren't real stocks, but tokens representing them and tracking their value.

More information about the latest release is available in this blog post.

[dkbit98]

- Support for Trezor and Bitbox hardware wallets: Cake Wallet now supports Trezor and Bitbox in its Android app. iOS integration is coming soon.

They really improved Cake wallet in recent few versions, and it's great to see they are finally adding support for Trezor and Bitbox hardware wallets.
It should be noted that this support for latest version 5.5.0 is only available on Cake mobile wallets currently.
I downloaded Cake desktop version and this option it is still greyed out and showing Coming Soon.

[Pmalek]

It should be noted that this support for latest version 5.5.0 is only available on Cake mobile wallets currently.
I downloaded Cake desktop version and this option it is still greyed out and showing Coming Soon.

That's interesting that they would only release those features for the mobile versions of the wallet. Cake Wallet 5.5.0 is also available for Windows and can be downloaded from GitHub, but like you said, the new options are probably still unavailable. A 5.5.1 version is currently in pre-release. I don't see a Windows file for download but a Linux one is available.   

[dkbit98]

That's interesting that they would only release those features for the mobile versions of the wallet. Cake Wallet 5.5.0 is also available for Windows and can be downloaded from GitHub, but like you said, the new options are probably still unavailable. A 5.5.1 version is currently in pre-release. I don't see a Windows file for download but a Linux one is available.  

Generally speaking desktop wallet version is usually lagging behind mobile wallet releases this days, especially on wind0ws os.
I can see Cake v5.5.2 is now available for Linux and mobile version, but you need to build your own wind0ws version manually from source code.
It's not hard to built your own, but I doubt most win users know how to do that.

[Lucius]

Has anyone had any problems with the XMR wallet lately? I have a problem with synchronization, because what usually took 3-4 minutes maximum, is now terribly slow and takes about 20 minutes (if it even manages to finish). Maybe something changed with XMR nodes or Cake screwed something up, but it definitely doesn't work like it used to.

[pooya87]

Has anyone had any problems with the XMR wallet lately? I have a problem with synchronization, because what usually took 3-4 minutes maximum, is now terribly slow and takes about 20 minutes (if it even manages to finish). Maybe something changed with XMR nodes or Cake screwed something up, but it definitely doesn't work like it used to.

A couple of times I have had trouble with Tron where it doesn't sync or can't even connect. It seems like some of their nodes gets overloaded or something that leads them to fail to respond to the clients. In some cases using the "reconnect" or manually changing the server helps speed things up.

[cygan]

Cake Wallet recently released the new 5.6.0 version. unfortunately, there was no information about it on social media, and i can't seem to find the corresponding blog article either...
but that doesn't matter now you can download the new version at the following link - there are several new features:

https://github.com/cake-tech/cake_wallet/releases/tag/v5.6.0

[pooya87]

Cake Wallet recently released the new 5.6.0 version.

The Cake Wallet developers team have been very active and have been publishing new versions regularly while both fixing issues and improving the software. That's a good characteristic for any project. I still hope they start signing their binaries with key instead of just publishing the hash, it's a lot safer that way.

🔄 Smarter Node Switching: Our automatic node switching is now even better at finding the most reliable connection, ensuring your wallet stays synced and ready.

BTW this improvement could potentially fix the existing connectivity and sync issue that was discussed above..

[SilverCryptoBullet]

The Cake Wallet developers team have been very active and have been publishing new versions regularly while both fixing issues and improving the software. That's a good characteristic for any project. I still hope they start signing their binaries with key instead of just publishing the hash, it's a lot safer that way.

BTW this improvement could potentially fix the existing connectivity and sync issue that was discussed above..

apojo can have some reviews from this website too.
https://walletscrutiny.com/?platform=allPlatforms&page=0&query-string=cake

Reviews show no source in 7-year and 5-year ago reviews but in the OP, I see the Github link. Likely Cake wallet developer team decided to change the wallet from close source to open source recent years.
https://walletscrutiny.com/iphone/com.fotolockr.cakewallet/
https://walletscrutiny.com/android/com.cakewallet.cake_wallet/

It can be their good strategic development change but the wallet history needs more transparency. At their Github, there is a description about the Cake wallet.
https://github.com/cake-tech/cake_wallet

Cake Wallet is an open-source, non-custodial, and private multi-currency crypto wallet for Android, iOS, macOS, and Linux.

I don't really like it, and I would prefer to support Cake wallet team if they add information about their past history when it was close source.

[Lucius]

Has anyone had any problems with the XMR wallet lately? I have a problem with synchronization, because what usually took 3-4 minutes maximum, is now terribly slow and takes about 20 minutes (if it even manages to finish). Maybe something changed with XMR nodes or Cake screwed something up, but it definitely doesn't work like it used to.

A couple of times I have had trouble with Tron where it doesn't sync or can't even connect. It seems like some of their nodes gets overloaded or something that leads them to fail to respond to the clients. In some cases using the "reconnect" or manually changing the server helps speed things up.

After a few tries it worked for me, although it took almost 10 minutes. Maybe it's because I haven't opened my wallet in a long time, so a lot more data was needed. After I downloaded the latest version, it no longer shows me how long it takes for a full synchronization, but the number of blocks that need to be downloaded - which may depend on the size of the data that needs to be downloaded.

[pooya87]

The Cake Wallet developers team have been very active and have been publishing new versions regularly while both fixing issues and improving the software. That's a good characteristic for any project. I still hope they start signing their binaries with key instead of just publishing the hash, it's a lot safer that way.

BTW this improvement could potentially fix the existing connectivity and sync issue that was discussed above..

apojo can have some reviews from this website too.
https://walletscrutiny.com/?platform=allPlatforms&page=0&query-string=cake

The only issues I see here (unless I'm missing something) is lack of reproducibility of the binaries that they've published and they have only reviewed the android and iphone platforms and not desktop. It is not as bad as being closed source but not having reproducible builds is still bad.
They really need to work on their releases and add 2 important things: sign their binaries with a PGP key and make them reproducible (for example just like Electrum guys have been doing for many years).

[dkbit98]

BTW this improvement could potentially fix the existing connectivity and sync issue that was discussed above..

There was some error with this version and code was not working to open wallet, some error was shown:



Than I saw Cake already released new version 5.6.1 and this fixed the issue for me.
Node syncing is much better with this update, and I think they finally released this update for all operating systems.
I did notice syncing is much better now, and after testing with different coins in Cake everything worked great.
https://github.com/cake-tech/cake_wallet/releases/tag/v5.6.1

[Pmalek]

Cake Wallet recently released the new 5.6.0 version. unfortunately, there was no information about it on social media, and i can't seem to find the corresponding blog article either...

It took them almost a week to announce the 5.6.0 version on their blog, but now it's there: https://blog.cakewallet.com/we-optimized-everything-faster-performance-better-ux-maximum-security/

Faster loading and better syncing are definitely great improvements because it is irritating when you experience sync issues and it takes too long. The new version added the option to enable a Duress PIN. That can be useful if someone forces you to unlock your wallet, but you don't want to show them that you have any crypto there, so instead you wipe everything. It's great unless the person knows exactly what you have, then you can have even more problems.

[Z-tight]

The new version added the option to enable a Duress PIN. That can be useful if someone forces you to unlock your wallet, but you don't want to show them that you have any crypto there, so instead you wipe everything. It's great unless the person knows exactly what you have, then you can have even more problems.

That looks like a very risky feature to use when in a situation of a $5 wrench attack. For example, in electrum, when you extend your seed phrase with a passphrase, the seed phrase still opens up the base wallet, and you can even load it with a convincing sum. For a long time now, i have recommended a passphrase as a useful tool for plausible deniability and i still believe it so.

However, in the case of this duress pin, i think it is very risky. They say it 'wipes cake wallet entirely', does it mean that even if you have funds in your wallet, once you enter the duress pin, it shows up as zero?

[Pmalek]

However, in the case of this duress pin, i think it is very risky. They say it 'wipes cake wallet entirely', does it mean that even if you have funds in your wallet, once you enter the duress pin, it shows up as zero?

Yeah, probably. I think Cake wallet loads a brand-new wallet that has a zero balance. It's then your turn to convince the attacker that you don't own any crypto. It would be better if the software was able create a fake history. For instance, a transaction history showing that you had a certain amount of bitcoin at one point but you sent it somewhere else. Again, you will have to convince the thief that you sold the coins. Depending on how much the person knows about you and your holdings, that may or may not work.

[Karl_3000]

5.6.2 has been released.

Fix QR scanning
UI enhancements
Bug fixes

https://github.com/cake-tech/cake_wallet/releases

However, in the case of this duress pin, i think it is very risky. They say it 'wipes cake wallet entirely', does it mean that even if you have funds in your wallet, once you enter the duress pin, it shows up as zero?

Yeah, probably. I think Cake wallet loads a brand-new wallet that has a zero balance. It's then your turn to convince the attacker that you don't own any crypto. It would be better if the software was able create a fake history. For instance, a transaction history showing that you had a certain amount of bitcoin at one point but you sent it somewhere else. Again, you will have to convince the thief that you sold the coins. Depending on how much the person knows about you and your holdings, that may or may not work.

The wallet will be deleted but Cake wallet will not load a brand new wallet.

If you are about to set the pin, you will see this warning:



No brand new wallet creation mentioned so I decided to find out about it.

I went to check my seed phrase and passphrase where I backup both but in separate places so that I can easily recover back my wallet anytime I want to recover it.

I set the duress pin on the existing wallet, close the app, open the app again and I entered the duress pin, my wallet got deleted. It looked like the time you first downloaded the wallet when you have not used it to generate any wallet.

Important
For those that set fingerprint, someone with the wrench attack can take your device and force you to use your fingerprint instead which will take you to your wallet, your coins would be seen and be stolen softly.

For those that only use pin without fingerprint, you can enter the duress pin but all your wallet would be deleted.  This can let the wrench attacker to easily know that you are probably lying.

[Pmalek]

Important
For those that set fingerprint, someone with the wrench attack can take your device and force you to use your fingerprint instead which will take you to your wallet, your coins would be seen and be stolen softly.

For those that only use pin without fingerprint, you can enter the duress pin but all your wallet would be deleted.  This can let the wrench attacker to easily know that you are probably lying.

Perhaps, but not necessarily. I have Cake Wallet installed on my phone with a new test seed loaded into it, but I have never deposited any crypto to any of its addresses. I also have Electrum for mobile on my phone, but never used that either. I have those only for testing. You could beat me all day long with a wrench and I still wouldn't be able to give you anything from those two wallets.

The point is, the app itself is a good indicator but not absolute proof that it's used and is funded.