by Coinstrooper Crypto Articles
Quick Take
  • “People don’t abandon self-custody because they don’t believe in it – they abandon it because it’s inconvenient,” said Alex Devyatkin, founder and CEO of ERA.
  • “The Software Wallet doesn’t change what secures your assets.
  • It changes how easy it is to actually use that security every day.”
  • View portfolio balances across all supported networks, with each token clearly tagged by network

What Happened

ERA, the maker of the air-gapped ERA hardware wallet, today announced the launch of the ERA Software Wallet, a companion mobile app for iOS and Android that turns its air-gapped hardware device into a full self-custody ecosystem. The move addresses one of the most common trade-offs in crypto self-custody: hardware wallets are secure but often clunky to use day-to-day, while software wallets are convenient but hold keys online.

Ahead of launch, ERA commissioned a full white-box security audit from Cure53, a cybersecurity firm with an established track record auditing wallets and crypto infrastructure. Cure53 was given access to source code, builds, documentation, and internal components, and tested the mobile app, API, transaction construction, and QR/BC-UR signing flows. Every finding was fixed by ERA’s team and then retested by Cure53 to confirm the fix held.

Market Context

The companion app connects to the ERA hardware wallet to add portfolio management, swaps, and dApp access across 14 networks — while private keys never leave the device. The release follows a full independent security audit by Cure53, and lands alongside a major update to ERA Lens, ERA’s on-device scam-warning system, plus new hardware-side capabilities including Bitcoin multisig and on-device 2FA.

Why It Matters

This release adds a new scam-warning display, expands coverage to more DeFi and bridging protocols (including Rango, imToken, Rabby, MetaMask Portfolio Bridge, Mayan, Squid, LayerSwap, Stargate V2, GasZip, and Magpie), and can now decode newer, harder-to-read transaction formats such as EIP-7702, ERC-7821, and Safe multicalls — flagging unlimited approvals to unfamiliar addresses automatically.

Details

ERA’s model keeps the two roles separate by design — the phone prepares transactions, the hardware device signs them, and the private keys never touch the phone at all.

“People don’t abandon self-custody because they don’t believe in it – they abandon it because it’s inconvenient,” said Alex Devyatkin, founder and CEO of ERA. “The Software Wallet doesn’t change what secures your assets. It changes how easy it is to actually use that security every day.”

What’s in the ERA Software Wallet

The app gives users a single interface to manage assets across 14 networks – Bitcoin (SegWit, Taproot, and Legacy address types), Ethereum, Solana, Tron, Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Gnosis, zkSync, Kaia, and Aurora – while every transaction is still confirmed and signed on the ERA hardware device via QR or NFC.

Inside the app, users can:

View portfolio balances across all supported networks, with each token clearly tagged by network

Send and receive assets, with a network guard that prevents funds from being sent to the wrong chain

Buy and sell crypto through integrated providers, with automatic KYC/country detection and side-by-side rate comparison

Swap and bridge across chains in a single flow, powered by Rango’s routing, with a full quote shown before signing

Connect to dApps via WalletConnect, with sessions still requiring hardware-signed approval

Get proactive protection: warnings on unused token approvals, a spam-token filter, alerts on pending or stuck transactions, and full transaction history

App-level security includes PIN and biometric unlock (Face ID / Touch ID / fingerprint), auto-lock when the app is backgrounded, and screen-privacy protections that hide app content from the system app switcher and block screenshots and screen recording.

Backed by an Independent Security Audit

The summary and full technical reports are public:

Summary report (PDF)

Full pentest report (PDF)

The Headline Device Update: ERA Lens’s New Scam-Warning System

The main update on the device side is to ERA Lens, ERA’s built-in transaction-decoding layer, which translates what a transaction actually does into plain language before signing rather than showing raw hex data.

The team also added 37 real transactions drawn from known incidents – including Bybit, WazirX, Radiant, Inferno Drainer, and PREMINT – to its automated test suite, so every new firmware release is checked against these attack patterns before shipping.

Extended Protection, Built Into the App