Hosted Wallet

Overview

A hosted wallet lets users manage balances and transactions through a provider’s website, application, or API. The provider may pool on-chain assets, maintain an internal ledger, control private keys, and decide how deposits, withdrawals, fees, and confirmations are handled.

Some hosted products provide limited user-controlled signing or export, so the exact custody model must be verified. Provider insolvency, account suspension, cyberattack, jurisdiction, withdrawal restrictions, and incomplete segregation can affect access even when the user interface shows a balance.

Users should review legal ownership, custody, supported assets and networks, authentication, withdrawal controls, recovery, fees, and service availability. Businesses need independent records and should avoid keeping unnecessary value in operational services. Exit testing should confirm that assets and history can be transferred before dependence becomes critical.

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

Material risks for Hosted Wallet include credential compromise, malicious destinations, unsupported assets, wrong-network transfers, stale balances, compromised software, provider outage, privacy leakage, and inaccessible recovery material. For Hosted Wallet, controls should reflect value, automation, reversibility, and whether the organization or a third party controls signing.

Hosted 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.