Air-Gapped Wallet

Overview

An air-gapped wallet separates key generation and signing from internet-connected devices. It may be a dedicated hardware device, an offline computer, or another controlled system that imports unsigned transactions and exports signatures without joining a normal network.

The term describes connectivity, not the complete security level. A device can remain offline yet be compromised through its supply chain, firmware, removable media, malicious QR data, weak entropy, physical access, or an inaccurate display. Some devices also have radios or maintenance ports that must be disabled or governed.

A robust deployment verifies device authenticity, initializes keys in a controlled environment, limits transaction formats, confirms destination and amount on the offline device, and maintains tested backups. Teams should also plan software updates and incident response without silently breaking the intended separation.

Air-Gapped Wallet should be distinguished from the asset balance and from the application that displays it. For example, a customer-facing success message does not prove that the intended transaction executed on the correct network; operations should verify execution and reconcile the result before irreversible fulfillment.

The Air-Gapped Wallet workflow operates through several distinct states: request creation, user or policy approval, signature generation, network submission, execution, confirmation, balance recognition, and accounting. For Air-Gapped Wallet, a wallet interface or provider response can report progress, but it cannot replace verified transaction and ledger evidence.

Records for Air-Gapped Wallet should preserve account and address identifiers, asset and network identity, policy version, requester, approvers, signed payload or transaction reference, fees, timestamps, status history, confirmations, exceptions, and final balance and accounting effects. For Air-Gapped Wallet, corrections must remain linked rather than overwrite the original event.