Daedalus wallet explained

DAEDALUS wallet explained

You’re in the right place if you’re looking for a beginners’ guide to Daedalus wallet for Cardano!

First of all it’s not a typo. It’s actually spelled Daedalus and to be quite honest we struggled a bit with that at first! Glad that’s out of the way!  Today we’re taking a look at Daedalus wallet which is a Desktop wallet application for the Cardano network. We will have a look at some of the features, pros and cons. Let’s dive in.

It’s a desktop app

As previously mentioned Daedalus wallet is a Desktop application only. There is currently no iOS or Android mobile application available. It is supported on Windows 8.1 and 10 (64 Bit), Mac OS (64 Bit) & Linux (that’s right, you guessed it, 64 Bit).

Wen Daedalus light?

There has been talk of a Daedalus lite for mobile for some time now but it doesn’t look like it’ll be available any time soon. A potential reason for this leads me neatly into its main feature, and the thing that helps Daedalus stand out.

A truly decentralised, Full node wallet

Daedalus wallet is what is known as a full node wallet. In order for this to happen Daedalus downloads a full version of the Cardano Blockchain and independently verifies every transaction in its history (?). This allows for maximum security, completely trust-less operation and also removes the need to link to centralised, third party servers for verification.

The drawback is that initial setup can take an hour or two (or more if you believe the memes) and the application requires a lot more storage space than Yoroi wallet, for example. Daedalus also needs significant bandwidth to run smoothly.

But ultimately the locally performed verification is what cements Daedalus as the most secure Cardano wallet. Easily.

Other cool features

Daedalus has some other cool features that have become the norm for locally stored ADA wallets such as:

• You can stake or delegate your ADA with SPOs (like Upstream ?)
• Manage up to 20 different supported wallets
• Is integrated with the Ledger nano S & X

Areas for improvement?

One small aspect of Daedalus wallet that could definitely be improved is the number of supported languages. It currently supports only English and Japanese. If we use Yoroi as a comparison it supports English, Japanese, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Indonesian, French, German and Italian. In the interest of adoption and accessibility Daedalus needs to up its language game! Especially as the amazing Cardano community are spread all over the world.

Our summary

Overall, for decentralisation and security, you simply can’t beat Daedalus. It’s a full node wallet so uses a bit of bandwidth and takes a while to set up but the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks.

As always, if you find our Cardano content useful please consider staking with us (ticker UPSTR) and come and find us on twitter if you haven’t already.