Why we don't have better wallets for altcoins?

[Findingnemo]

I am talking about the wallets for altcoins, we only have very few in numbers which are considered to be a secured wallet to store altcoins such as MEW, Unstoppable wallet but many others were closed source or it has to be hardware wallet so just looking to find the reasons why developers are not interested in building a wallet like electrum for altcoins?

[_act_]

Bitcoin is decentralized and not centralized like most altcoins. Bitcoin developers like that. They are not really interested in money making that is why you will not see anything like swap or third party means of exchanging on bitcoin wallets.

But altcoins wallets developers are different. If you noticed, they create the wallet to make money. They are competing to have the highest people that download their wallet to make more money from them. So they do not want rivals or a developer that will easily copy their code.

[Mia Chloe]

+1 Findingnemo , this is a nice question. Also +1 _act_ you have  made quite some nice points here. Bitcoin is the biggest and most decentralised network aside from other privacy coins like monero. The idea like you said , is bitcoin developers are actually core enthusiasts of the network and as such they see no problems with creating safe and secure wallets. One most important things which bitcoin only wallets have issn open source code which shows transparency just like the bitcoin network does.

Many altcoins were created for the purpose of profit and as such they literally wouldn't want to risk much competition from other networks.

[hugeblack]

Good, open source and well-reviewed Bitcoin wallets are limited but given the nature of altcoins most of them are tokens and duplicates so if there is a wallet for the first 20 cryptocurrencies it will be a wallet for 99% of projects and some crypto projects come with wallets or forks of popular wallets. What you are looking for is a multi-currency crypto wallet, continuing to develop such wallets is expensive so most of them are closed source.

[libert19]

Fault lies in altcoin itself — more popular the alt, more chances that it'll get wallet created by quality devs or will be integrated in already established wallet apps.

Have your alt in top 10 by marketcap list and even if coin had no wallet's before, you'll see few pop-up in a short time.

[joniboini]

Competing with an already popular multicurrency wallet is not really a good idea if they want to make a profit from it. That being said, I do know one or two open-source projects dedicated to one altcoin being developed a while back. Most of them are no longer maintained, which is another proof that the effort to manage one is probably not worth it. Even the developer of an altcoin doesn't give enough support, I doubt the users care about it either. The market for open-source alternatives is quite niche from their POV at the end of the day. CMIIW.

[hugeblack]

Even the developer of an altcoin doesn't give enough support, I doubt the users care about it either. The market for open-source alternatives is quite niche from their POV at the end of the day. CMIIW.

If good projects like Litecoin don't have an active wallet #DevelopmentTeam , what would make developing wallets for unknown tokens and coins active or even trustworthy? I don't think I would download an anonymous wallet with limited downloads because it's open source.

[KryptoBull]

I am talking about the wallets for altcoins, we only have very few in numbers which are considered to be a secured wallet to store altcoins such as MEW, Unstoppable wallet but many others were closed source or it has to be hardware wallet so just looking to find the reasons why developers are not interested in building a wallet like electrum for altcoins?

I'm not quite following your question. Are you suggesting that we don't have good wallet apps for altcoins? I know Anchor for Antelope (Eos, Telos, Wax...), Metamask for EVM (Bsc, Thorchain, Polygon, Celo...), and Phantom and Safepal... I think they're pretty secure and reliable. Only a few wallets are closed-source like TrustWallet, but even they've had a good track record for years.

Electrum is a good wallet for BTC, but I don't see my friends using it much. They prefer multichain crypto wallets to manage assets across different blockchains.

[ABCbits]

so just looking to find the reasons why developers are not interested in building a wallet like electrum for altcoins?

FWIW, some developer already fork Electrum in order to support altcoin. Although the supported altcoin usually limited to fork of Bitcoin (such as BCH) or works in similar way with Bitcoin (such as LTC).

I am talking about the wallets for altcoins, we only have very few in numbers which are considered to be a secured wallet to store altcoins such as MEW, Unstoppable wallet but many others were closed source or it has to be hardware wallet so just looking to find the reasons why developers are not interested in building a wallet like electrum for altcoins?

I'm not quite following your question. Are you suggesting that we don't have good wallet apps for altcoins? I know Anchor for Antelope (Eos, Telos, Wax...), Metamask for EVM (Bsc, Thorchain, Polygon, Celo...), and Phantom and Safepal... I think they're pretty secure and reliable. Only a few wallets are closed-source like TrustWallet, but even they've had a good track record for years.

Electrum is a good wallet for BTC, but I don't see my friends using it much. They prefer multichain crypto wallets to manage assets across different blockchains.

From quick search, it seems Phantom and Safepal are closed-source wallet which isn't favored by OP. But otherwise i agree it's still possible to find fairly good altcoin wallet.

[target]

What about the TRUST wallet?
With the word TRUST on it, it seems trustworthy already alter and it's owned by the most trusted binance exchange.

There are lots of these wallets such as mycelium apart from electrum. They are however not very trusted unlike MEW.

[hugeblack]

FWIW, some developer already fork Electrum in order to support altcoin. Although the supported altcoin usually limited to fork of Bitcoin (such as BCH) or works in similar way with Bitcoin (such as LTC).

Many wallets are forks of Electrum, there is a version for Ethereum and Dash. The only drawback is that it does not support multiple coins, which makes it less popular than altcoins, in addition to the limited updates.

[Rikafip]

What about the TRUST wallet?
With the word TRUST on it, it seems trustworthy already alter and it's owned by the most trusted binance exchange.

I wouldn't trust with anything that is controlled by Binance for any other thing other than short term hodl of few hundreds of dollars worth of crypto.

regarding the "trust" in the name of the wallet, all i have to say is "don't trust, verify". 

[KingsDen]

Some altcoins have relatively very short lifespan. Imagine developing a wallet for a particular altcoin and tomorrow the altcoin vanishes from the market. The fact that we cannot really tell how long an altcoin will last is the major reason developers are cautious about creating wallets for altcoins. If a developer puts in efforts to create a wallet for altcoins that are highly unpredictable, all his efforts will be a waste at the end if people don't demand for that wallet.

Again, the demand for an individual altcoin is too low compared to Bitcoins. Most wallet developers are interested in what they will gain financially from the wallets they've created. The poor demand they will get from an individual altcoin is not enough incentive that will motivate them to create wallets for altcoins.

[Aanuoluwatofunmi]

I am talking about the wallets for altcoins, we only have very few in numbers which are considered to be a secured wallet to store altcoins such as MEW, Unstoppable wallet but many others were closed source or it has to be hardware wallet so just looking to find the reasons why developers are not interested in building a wallet like electrum for altcoins?

I don't also know the reasons behind the use of few wallet for altcoins, maybe some of them were mostly expected to be on custodial exchanges since most traders and holders used such platforms for their p2p and we can only discover that few people are the ones holding altcoins, maybe due to the fact that they are afraid of getting hurt by scam or other things common to that.

[Findingnemo]

we can only discover that few people are the ones holding altcoins, maybe due to the fact that they are afraid of getting hurt by scam or other things common to that.

Few altcoins has certain communities just like bitcoin for example XMR and also this is trillion dollar market so even if the altcoins are 40% that's still big in numbers so there's room for development but like said being open source doesn't generate revenue to them which is why not really much people building their interest towards building such wallets for their altcoins.

Even for the closed source, the numbers are really small and even for desktop their's not much option apart from coinomi.