Before word...
Some of my followers might remember the review I made for Uptrennd because of a similar title. That review was mostly negative because my experience was mostly negative and I shared that with you. Instead of jumping on the praising bandwagon, I prefer to look at a product in all its entirety and point out both, its flaws and qualities.
If you're worried that this is going to be a bad review, calm down, Atomic Wallet gets some things right, and depending on how much you care about your privacy and security this wallet might be a great solution for you.
What is the Atomic Wallet
In simple words, it is a piece of software, an application, that you can use to manage your cryptocurrency. You should be able to use it like you would a physical wallet. You can pay for stuff, you can add more money, etc. Since this is not a physical wallet it's functionalities can be extended beyond just holding assets and the Atomic Wallet is more than capable of dealing with complex tasks such as staking cryptocurrency, exchanging assets, and buying more crypto with debit or credit card.
Being able to do all this from one app is great and it offers the user a better overall experience than making him run around the internet in search of different services. You can stake high-caliber coins like Tron (TRX) and Tezos (XTZ) and many more are coming soon.
However, I haven't introduced you to the greatest feature of Atomic Wallet, namely the fact that you can use multiple coins and tokens. There are so many that I won't even bother to count them. If you're like me and own only popular stuff like DAI, Ethereum, BAT, and some Bitcoin dust you'll find that the Atomic Wallet is a more than capable app to manage your digital money.
Setting up the Atomic Wallet
The setup is pretty straight forward. If you have ever made an account somewhere, then you can set up your Atomic Wallet with ease. All you have to do that's different from normal apps is save your 12 words backup seed. Please don't overlook this step and take it seriously as those words are the only way to access and recover your accounts. Without them, you'll be unable to get into your Atomic Wallet and you might even lose your money.
Upon creating your account, the app will set a bunch of real wallets on the blockchains it supports and it will integrate them into the interface.
How does Atomic Wallet compare to others I tried
Uphold
The first wallet I tried was Uphold. I began using uphold at about the same time when I started using the Brave browser. Uphold requires you to send a lot of private data about yourself like your ID, your face, your address, etc. Also, you never own the wallets you use on Uphold since you have no access to the private keys of those wallets. If tomorrow Uphold goes down, your money is gone without a way to recover them. I still can't understand Brave's partnership with Uphold, but I don't like it.
Metamask
Recently I transferred all my funds to a Metamask wallet. Metamask, even though it only works for Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, it is a great wallet that provides you with the privacy and security that should characterize blockchain. The wallet setup process is easy, you get access to the private keys and you don't sand any kind of private data to Metamask. Metamask integrates nicely with multiple third-party services like token swap utilities, exchanges, and even games. Metamask is available as a browser extension and recently they put out an android app that I tested and it works like a charm.
Atomic Wallet
Atomic Wallet strikes a balance between Uphold's support for multiple coins and Metamask's no private data, access to private keys type of policy. The fact that they allow you to buy, exchange, and stake your crypto right in their app is a step forward from Metamask, but I can't recommend this wallet because of...
Security and Privacy concerns
One of the reasons I left Uphold was the fact that I had no control over my wallets and therefore over my funds. I also couldn't trust Uphold to respect my privacy when doing crypto transactions (which they don't) and I couldn't even trust Uphold to hold my funds securely. All of that is because I can't see what they're doing.
Whenever Uphold tells me that my funds are mine and they are fine with them I can't help but associate them with a traditional bank. They take your money and they do whatever they please with it and when things go south they run to the government for bailouts. When Uphold tells you to trust them that's the moment you should start doubting them.
What about Metamask...
Metamask on the other hand is very much free and open-source software. Remember, it's free as in "freedom" not "free beer" since the later doesn't mean you get any privacy or security. Now, the fact that you can see the code doesn't guarantee that some app is secure and doesn't steal your data, but since the code is out there, malicious "features" will be pointed out eventually and the community can remove them, this last bit being of extreme importance.
We can see in the above image how Metamask has put out there 71 repositories of their own and the most important, they published the code to their browser extension and their android app which is the main way most people are going to interact with Metamask.
When Metamask says that your access is private and secure, you don't have to trust them, you can see for yourself.
"But I don't know how to code and so, I can't verify their claims."
That's where the community comes in. If you have no idea how code works it doesn't mean that you need to trust the company. You can trust the thousands of other people that use the product and have the technical skill to read and understand the code. Why trust a soulless entity when you can take your neighbor's word?
And finally let's talk about Atomic Wallet
The reason I can't recommend this app is that they put in place a trust system which shouldn't be there, they need you the user to trust the company behind the product that when you use their app, everything is handled securely and the private keys that are on your device stay on your device.
The picture above is taken from their website. They promise you that your keys are encrypted and never leave your device and that basic features are anonymous. This is the same type of promises that Metamask makes, but in the case of Atomic Wallet neither me, nor you, nor anyone else can verify those claims.
And now, I'm asking you, what good does it make that you have the keys to your wallet if someone might have a copy? I'm not trying to make claims, but since everything happens behind closed doors, the fact that you are in control is only a supposition you have to make. The fact that your data is secure is just something you can't see for yourself so it's only natural to have doubts and questions.
This is how their GitHub page looks like:
As you can see, you can't. 😂
There is nothing related to their app here.
Unfortunately due to this, I can't recommend this app to any of you. This, however, doesn't mean that the application itself is of low quality and does shady things. The Atomic Wallet is a great application, I wish they would release the source code for their apps and I would really like to revise this article at some point, strike those lines and tell you with all my heart that I recommend this app.
Until that day, stay safe, take care, and keep using the app that best serves your purpose, but remember that security and privacy shouldn't happen in dark, so instead I hope the Atomic team will seek out to turn on the light. For now, I recommend you use Metamask for all your Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens needs. See you next time!