What is Jaxx?
The Jaxx wallet software was launched in 2014 by Decentral Inc., Canada’s leading blockchain company.
It is a multicurrency HD wallet which offers support for dozens of different digital assets and features cross-platform trading, ease-of-switch between stored coins, native camera scanning, master seed backup, among many other features.
Supported cryptocurrencies
Jaxx offers support for a large list of cryptocurrencies, which spans over 65 coins and ERC-20 tokens. The wallet lets users store Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Litecoin, EOS, and Zcash among others.
Interface
Jaxx’s UI is one of its strong points. Its design is very intuitive proving to be extremely helpful for those crypto users that lack technical expertise.
The platform allows users to switch between cryptos, send and receive fiat currencies, enter addresses, scan QR codes in a simple manner.
But some user shave reported that there are various bugs which make the wallet experience lags. While the development team has been dedicated to solving these issues, there is more needed to be done in order for the software to be fully effective.
In-built Exchange
Jaxx has integrated Shapeshift into it, which allows users to convert one coin into another in the app itself.
Security
Jaxx claims to implement strong security practices meant to ensure the security of user funds.
The wallet stores private keys directly on user devices, not on their external servers, thus making it hard for a third party to get access to the funds. But this also means that your device is susceptible to getting hacked.
The wallet has a backup feature which automatically generates a mnemonic seed– which is a string of random words- that users can write down and use in case they have to recover their coins.
Additionally, the wallet also respects user privacy, by not requiring any kind of user information or verification upon creating an account. This means that they do not collect any information about you when you sign up.
But, even with these security measures in place, Jaxx was victim to a security issue earlier in 2017 when $400,000 in Ethereum and Zcash were reportedly stolen from users’ accounts. The vulnerability, as discovered by VX labs, allowed the attacker to find out your 12-words seed.
The developers stated that the issue was in relation with the fact that “Jaxx “encrypts” the wallet seed, but with a hard-coded and easily extracted key, which means this is not encryption but rather obfuscation, which is not much better than no encryption.”
Jaxx’s CTO responded on Reddit to the hack by giving a rather disadvantageous statement, saying that the company was very comfortable with their security model and that there will always be a trade-off between user experience, portability, and security.
In addition to this, there is not much information concerning the hack’s circumstances, hence the problem could have also been on the user’s part.
Supported Platforms
Jaxx wallet was first a mobile wallet, but now can be used across several platforms which gives Jaxx users a lot of flexibility. These platforms are the following: Windows, Apple and Linux desktop; Android and iOS mobile and tablet; Google Chrome and Firefox extensions. It is able to work and sync across all the aforementioned devices.
Fees
Jaxx can be downloaded and used for free. It does, however, apply transaction fees, which go to the networks that run the cryptocurrency you are using. The wallet derives its profits by facilitating ShapeShift transactions.
Jaxx also provides three custom fee options for its users – from slow to high fees for faster transactions. But slow fees are not recommended as they can take up days to get mined. Instead, the average or the fast fee option should be used for easy confirmation transaction times.
Verdict
Jaxx is a wallet which would interest beginner users that are looking to store a broad cryptocurrency selection. There have been some complaints regarding its slow performance and bugs, as well as doubts concerning its security, but nonetheless, the wallet is still among the popular choices for crypto storage.
Image Source: Jaxx.io
