Frequently asked questions

• Is Mitilena Wallet a non-custodial wallet?
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  Yes. The private keys are stored with you. This means you can send your funds as you wish, we have no control over your cryptocurrency. We do not take it into custody and we are not responsible for it. You must store your own private key.

• Why is a non-custodial wallet better than a classic one?
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  In a custodial (classic) wallet, your private keys are stored on the servers of the company providing you with services. This company may go bankrupt (like the FTX crypto exchange and dozens of others), this company may be hacked (like Mt. Gox and dozens of others), the owner of the company may simply appropriate your funds (like the Thodex crypto exchange and others) or you may have your funds frozen citing the fact that you cannot prove the origin of the funds (a common practice). You may fall under sanctions, restrictions through no fault of your own, and so on.

• Am I the owner of the private keys in your wallet?
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  Yes. You receive private keys at the time of generating a random address on a separate subdomain of our wallet (Mitilena Generate subproject, at https://generate.mitilena.com/) or in a separate offline application (an even more secure solution).

• Is Mitilena a cold wallet?
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  Yes, Mitilena is a cold wallet across all its versions.
  Regardless of how you use it:

  • with hardware NFC cards,
  • through the web version,
  • desktop applications,
  • mobile applications,
  • or even downloading it to an encrypted flash drive.

  
  In all scenarios, Mitilena remains a cold wallet.

• Is Mitilena a wallet with an offline signature?
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  Yes, we have a separate application for offline signing. This means that this application can run on a computer without internet access. This application does not use the internet at all. If you're interested in how this works, read on about cryptography.

• Is it possible to use Mitilena Wallet on a flash drive for free?
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  Yes, download the free wallet app and use it. If you have enough technical knowledge, you can encrypt it. Even if you don't know how, the program itself encrypts each private key with a separate password, which, by the way, can consist not only of numbers, but of any symbols, even emoticons. Therefore, this protection is quite durable.

• It's too hard for me, how can I just start using it?
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  Either purchase the most secure version with three hardware NFC cards through this link or use the free version: at the top right, press the + (plus) button, select the cryptocurrency you need, press generate private key, copy this data to notes or print it out, and that's it, you have a wallet with an address. You can receive and send. This is free. However, you need to keep in mind that this is a professional tool, with increased responsibility in exchange for increased security and it is not intended for beginners in the crypto industry.

• What is a private key in cryptocurrency and how does an address relate to it?
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  Simplified: a private key is a long password. Using a private (closed) key, you can generate a public (open) key, this is called an address in the blockchain to which you can receive cryptocurrency. Knowing the private key, you can get the public key, but this operation is almost impossible to reverse. It is impossible to obtain a private key from a public key (address). Or you can, but it will take 4.5 billion years of brute force.

• What is blockchain in a nutshell?
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  Information sealed in blocks, where each subsequent block contains a label with the code of the previous block and with its own code. It's like a box of documents where each new box in the chain will have a label from the old box and a label of the current box. Using this simple method with these labels, you can arrange the boxes in ascending order up to the ceiling (find out which was the first, which was the last, and so on). Similarly, you cannot take a box from the middle after some time and replace it with another one with a different code. The codes must match.
  You might say: "I will replace the contents of the box, but I will paste the same code." This is not possible, because the code is not simple. The code represents an inventory of all goods and documents in the box, including their condition: new, used, etc. If you replace the box, it can only be with an identical one. Given that we're talking about a digital box, it must be identical symbol by symbol, i.e., mirrored. This guarantees the integrity of your entire stack of boxes or chain of blocks, which is what a blockchain is. The inventory itself is also encrypted (hashed) by the SHA algorithm to shorten the length of the inventory, this is the final code of the box.

• How can you encrypt an entire notebook with an inventory of goods into one small code?
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  For example, the SHA256 algorithm is one-way encryption, this is also called hashing. 20 pages of text can be transformed into one line, which is called a hash, an example of such a line: "f88bd37626922a08e0111c8feed17ee879e6aeb1b7975f2ef8a95b93dd88c9a5". It will not be possible to decrypt the content of 20 pages back from this line. But only having identical text of 20 pages, you will be able to get a 1 to 1 hash code.

• What is encryption in a nutshell?
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  You are exchanging letters with a friend by mail and want to prevent the mailmen from reading the contents. You've agreed that you will always replace each letter in your text with a specific other letter in the alphabet – this is called an encryption algorithm (method). You've also created a text sheet with a correspondence table, showing which letter to replace each letter with to decrypt the text. For example, A to Ch, B to K, and so on. This sheet with the correspondence table is called a private key. Having this correspondence table and knowing the encryption algorithm (simple replacement of letters with another, in our case), anyone will be able to decrypt the encrypted letter. For example: "Hello, let me know how you are" (in English) in encrypted form will look like: "Awccf, cwr nw btfq efq zfr xdw". To decrypt, you take the first letter A and look in the table for which one to replace it with, and so on, each letter. A similar encryption algorithm was used by Gaius Julius Caesar. Later, each state developed its own encryption algorithms, and they were classified, typically for military purposes. Only in recent decades has encryption become available to everyone.

• Is it really impossible to find a private key by brute force?
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  If we talk about Bitcoin, then according to our calculations, if you have 1000 computers for brute force, then to pick a private key of this length: f88bd37626922a08e0111c8feed17ee879e6aeb1b7975f2ef8a95b93dd88c9a5. You will need at least 4.5 billion years. That's approximately how old our planet is, according to modern scientists.

• Is a blockchain transaction authenticated with the sender's private key?
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  Yes, you sign the transaction and for this you use your private key, which should be stored only with you. The blockchain doesn't care from which computer or which country or who exactly signed the transaction, it only cares that the signature is genuine. If you don't control your private key, you'll never be able to find out from which country, from which place someone made a transfer of your funds. Such an investigation is impossible. Such data is not analyzed and not stored on blockchain nodes.
  Someone may have the private key of your wallet, but you will have no way of knowing about it until they transfer your crypto assets to themselves. You can have a wallet for 10 years, to which someone on the other side of the earth has access, and only when Bitcoin grows tenfold, this someone can transfer your funds. This will be the most disappointing investment. To prevent this from happening, wallets like ours exist.
  The private key cannot be transferred to anyone, it is impossible to keep crypto assets for a long time on other people's servers, where access to the private key may be available to: the database administrator, the director of the company and his wife, a senior programmer and possibly several hacker groups in sleep mode. A retired senior programmer can reset 1 out of 100,000 wallets available to him from the other side of the Earth, and the exchange will say that they could not hack one wallet out of 100,000. This means that your account was hacked personally and the exchange has nothing to do with it. It's your own fault. Proving the opposite is almost impossible for the average user.

• Does a non-custodial wallet sign a transaction offline?
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  Both yes and no, because you're sending different requests to the network from this application. Each request carries information. For checking balance and so on. What if it decided to carry your private key? So formally, the transaction may be signed on your device - offline. But you won't be able to verify this, because you don't know exactly what commands are being sent to the server from your computer. Offline is when the program doesn't contact the network at all.
  Our wallet really does sign offline even in the free version, but for this you need to trust us 100%. If there is no such trust, buy our offline transaction signing module, where the application itself works completely without a network and you don't even need to trust us, 100% offline.

• Why is offline transaction signature needed?
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  If your computer is infected, then nothing will help you except an offline signature. Even a computer infected with a thousand Trojan horses will not be able to steal your cryptoassets, even your private key in clear text. Simply because it will not be able to send this information in any way. No network = no delivery of stolen information. This is security at the level of governments and military organizations.
  

  Security grades:
  • Storing cryptocurrency in custodial hot wallets or exchanges. This is the most common, but extremely unsafe way. It accounts for about 95% of the entire cryptocurrency market, as exchanges are the main gateway to the world of cryptocurrencies. Your assets don't belong to you at all. You can dispose of them as long as the exchange is favorable to you. If the exchange doubts the documents about your place of residence or the origin of funds, it may request a certificate: where did you get $10,000, which you used to buy bitcoin 5 years ago, and how did you earn $10 million? Ah, no certificate, then our AML KYC department on the Coconut Islands decided to block you for supporting terrorism, extremism, and all sins combined. Thank you for your bitcoins, they will go to the development fund of our AML KYC department. Direct all questions to the court on the Coconut Islands, but the airport has not been built here yet, use boats. Add to this that all crypto viruses in the world are aimed at these wallets and exchanges with hacking through address substitution.
  • Storing funds in web wallets extensions like MetaMask and so on. They inform every site that they are installed on your computer. Every. And if there's a hacker on the other side, he can try to hack it by throwing some fraudulent dialog at you. In addition, you enter a private key into it and whether it was sent somewhere else or not, no one knows and will not know (see point 5 on this topic).
  • Storing funds in free cold wallet programs. First, all the viruses in the world are aimed at them, second, as in the case with the point above, you entered a key there and whether it was sent somewhere else or not, no one knows. However, this is already the first acceptable option. If the amounts are small, then this is the entry point for storage. Our solutions are also included here, such as using a website or downloading our free applications (except that we are not so popular and all the viruses in the world are not yet aimed at us).
  • Storing a private key on HSM hardware flash drives like Yubikey. In theory, this is one of the secure options, but the private key cannot be extracted from the flash drive itself, in any way. This means that your condition completely depends on the functionality of the flash drive, which is extremely unreliable. Imagine that your million dollars depends on a device that can easily fail, like a microwave. Go to amazon or ebay, open any popular flash drive, see how many negative reviews it has, that it just stopped working. Now think, you took a million dollars and put it on a device that is Guaranteed to break someday according to the laws of physics and this day can come any day, especially unclear chips can stop working any day. And if it breaks, there is no way you can get your bitcoins out of there. It can't even be sent to service, because the manufacturer company itself states that the private key cannot be extracted from there.
  • Classic hardware wallets on USB flash drives. This is already a worthy level. Compared to HSM flash drives, you can already export the private key and print it out, put it in a safe, and if the wallet flash drive fails from carrying it in your pocket and moisture, you can in theory find the private key in the safe, buy a new wallet and load it there (however, in practice, the sheet with the private key will most likely be lost by this point). Non-obvious disadvantages of this solution: the same as with MetaMask, each hardware wallet installs a "bridge" on your computer between the physical device and the browser, that is, every website on the internet sees that you have a hardware wallet connected and can try to force a connection with it. If there is a connection, then there is a possibility of hacking. Because opening to every site is still too much. Hackers implanted a virus in your favorite site, you went there with a connected wallet and immediately attempts at hacking began, you don't need to download anything, your wallet interface is open by default. Further. For me, more important. The bridge is an application that hangs in hidden mode and always works, even after 5 years, if you no longer use the wallet. It consumes system resources and is constantly doing something. What exactly is it doing? What can be constantly calculated in the background? Why for the sake of one security do I sacrifice another, installing an unclear hidden undocumented service on my computer? Maybe it's spying on me? Next point. You must trust the company 100%. Because the signature there happens at the moment when the wallet is online, that is, even if no one hacks the wallet, it can be hacked by the company itself or by an individual employee. Whenever there is an exchange of information and you don't control this information, there is always a chance that your seed phrase or private key will fly away in the general flow. You won't be able to prove anything. Understand, this is not a bank, where you can trace the entire chain and block payments. Here, they will steal a million dollars and people will not even be able to explain technically competently what happened to them. And they won't give them a platform for a voice, they won't invite you to television, and even if they do, you won't be able to argue. You didn't install proxying of all network requests through Fiddler on your computer and didn't track the behavior of someone else's program for a year. And you don't have these logs, so don't slander, and here's a lawsuit for you about protecting honor and dignity. And your private key in the table was seen by the maid. And the last point. Many chips used in such wallets have long been hacked. This is widely known among security experts. Therefore, one of the popular wallets is even ready to decrypt its own wallets confiscated by the police. That is, it is protection from a neighbor, not from a powerful force.
  • The best level of convenience and reliability: our solution with NFC hardware cards. Something similar to an HSM flash drive and hardware wallets. However, there are no disadvantages, as with the HSM flash drive in the exclusivity of one flash drive. With us, you can have the same private key on any number of cards (by default, three). There are no disadvantages, as with hardware wallets, you don't need to install a "bridge" hidden program. You don't need to buy more than one wallet. You don't need to store the private key in an unsafe place where it can be stolen, for example, during cleaning. And in general, it's just very convenient, you don't need to connect a flash drive and so on. If it takes 4 billion years to decrypt an HSM flash drive, then it takes 22000 years to decrypt our card. Yes, a little less, but identical in practice. There is only one point that is similar to the hardware wallets above, you need to trust the company 100%.
  • Paranoid level of security. Using our wallet only to view balances, and signing transactions on a separate, completely isolated from the network device. We eliminate the last point with 100% trust. There's no trust here, pure pragmatism. No hidden request when signing a transaction our application is not able to send, because on the computer where it works you have not connected to the internet.What comes to this application, you see (via QR or text), there is ordinary transaction data. What you get on the output, you also see (Hex of the transaction, which will need to be published to the network). Yes, it's not as convenient as the option above, but this is the level of government and military organizations. Your data will not be stolen by either a hacker or the wallet provider company. We sell such a module for offline signing, you can install it on Windows, Mac OS, Linux. As PWA it is also available for mobile devices, someday we will release this as regular mobile applications. In fact, anyone can decompile our .apk application for Android and make sure that the private key is not transferred to the server. For 99% of our users, the solution from point 6 is enough - purchase our wallet with NFC cards. For the rest, who have millions of dollars in their account, we recommend using points 6 and 7 together, that is, additionally purchase a module for offline signature.

• If something happens, can I move my wallets to another wallet?
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  Of course, because you have a private key and in some blockchains a seed phrase (mnemonic of 12-16 words). We focus specifically on private keys, and not on seed phrases (mnemonics), because the algorithm for derivation (extraction) of addresses from a seed phrase is not always strictly followed (the same seed phrase can give different addresses from different providers). A private key is a lower-level solution and therefore simpler and more reliable.

• Where should I store my private keys?
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  If you purchased a paid package with NFC cards, write the key on all three cards — this eliminates the need to print it out or store it somewhere separately. You can also buy several NFC stickers and duplicate the key on them, sticking them, for example, under the table. If you use the free version of the wallet, be sure to print out the key. In the paid version of Mitilena Generate, QR codes are automatically saved, which allows you to conveniently scan them instead of manually rewriting them. Storing the key digitally (for example, in notes, correspondence, or email) is acceptable if the amounts are relatively small for you and you are ready to accept the risk of loss with a probability of 0.5%.

• I enjoyed reading the technical aspects, where can I get more information on this topic?
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  Read the blog of expert Marek Hruska. There are interesting articles there.

• Are there solutions for secure cryptocurrency storage for companies?
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  All instructions above apply to companies. You can write to us, clarifying your situation, perhaps we can cooperate with you.

• What is Mitilena Pay?
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  This is the processing of cryptocurrency payments. With its help, you can start accepting payments in cryptocurrency from companies and individuals. Both online in an online store, through e-mail invoicing, and in a regular store through a terminal. System commission 0.8%. The first 3 months of use are free, commission 0%.
  You can be paid from the Mitilena eco-system or from any other wallet or exchange. The system works with your cold wallet — your funds stay under your full control at all times. No registration required.

• Who is on the project team?
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  The team includes highly qualified programmers, experienced entrepreneurs, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts. We all work under the leadership of a talented, friendly, and inspiring leader - Jan Peisha.

• Does my wallet work without registration?
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  This is a professional wallet, registration is not required. You can monitor the status of your crypto assets without registration and without entering private keys. Just add an address and select blockchain. Be careful, if you clear the local cache in your browser, your saved wallets will be deleted. Therefore, if you are going to use it without registration, it's better to download the program, then clearing the local cache will not affect the wallets saved in the program. Always remember, you must have a private key saved somewhere else. You should not rely 100% on private keys stored in the program.

• Is there technical support?
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  Technical support is provided only to premium users who purchased the paid version. Our project does not provide free technical support. If you don't pay for a product, then you are the product. But we don't sell your data. Therefore, we hope for your gratitude for such a good product that allows you to send 10 bitcoins without risk, without registration in 10 clicks, without transferring your private key anywhere.

• Will it always be possible to use the wallet without registration?
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  Some jurisdictions impose rules that you must be identified, so if you are in such a jurisdiction you will need to register. However, these laws generally apply to custodial, hot wallets. We technically have registration, so if in any doubt - register.

• Does your wallet require KYC?
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  When you use a cold wallet, we do not have access to your funds. We do not accept your cryptocurrency for storage, there is no fact of transfer, no fact of ownership. Therefore, KYC is not required. We do not manage your cryptocurrency, you do not give it to us for storage. But if you top up a hot wallet (needed for Mitilena Pay as a seller or for trading on a mini-exchange) and the top-up amount is higher than the equivalent of 1000 EUR, then KYC is required. In this case, you are transferring to us for short-term storage the equivalent of 1000 EUR or higher, so by law we need to know who distributed this money to us.

• What data is needed for regular registration and use of a cold wallet?
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  Only your email.

• How is your product distributed?
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  As per standard industry practices, the product is distributed in "As Is" condition. We do not take responsibility for your misuse of our wallet or your loss of private keys. We do not take responsibility for possible errors in the product, unavailability of individual blockchains when blockchain nodes fail, for hacker attacks, blocking by providers or at the country level. However, we guarantee that we are working on the product and trying to make it convenient and safe for most users to use.

• How are cryptocurrency rates updated here?
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  Every 90 seconds with an averaged cryptocurrency rate according to one of the most popular blockchain trackers.

• Does the transaction signing in the web version also happen on my device?
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  Yes, in your browser. The signed hash of the transaction is then sent to the blockchain node. It is not possible to derive the original transaction from the hash. However, be aware of your browser extensions — they can access your data. If you use browser extensions, we recommend downloading the desktop or mobile app instead.