How we score crypto wallets

Wallet evidence comes from documents we can link to and date. That means the maker's security documentation and help centre, its public code (for example Trezor's firmware repository), published audit reports, bug-bounty terms, incident post-mortems, and court or regulator records when they exist. Technical standards anchor the rest. BIP-39 is the public specification for the recovery phrases that keys are generated from.

What does not count as evidence?

• Other review sites and affiliate blogs, even when they happen to be right. A claim that only appears there does not appear in our review.
• Social media posts, unless the post is the company's own announcement.
• Company marketing numbers presented as fact. A user count from the maker is attributed to the maker.

Each ledger row records the date we opened the source and, when the page shows one, the date the source carries. A help-centre page last edited two years ago therefore shows up as old in the ledger.

Through four checks, in this order. A wallet review that fails any of them does not ship.

1. Claim ledger. Every factual statement (fees, dates, licences, incidents, user numbers) goes into a table with its current value, the source URL, the publisher, the source's own date and the date we opened it. We cut any claim that has no fetched source.
2. Adversarial challenge. A separate second pass re-opens the sources for every high-stakes item (money, licences, incidents, lawsuits) plus a random 30% of the rest. Where the two passes disagree, the challenge wins.
3. Sentence-level QA. On the finished draft, every sentence that states a fact must map to a ledger row or a fetched source. We fix or delete any sentence that does not map.
4. 100-point audit. The audit scores the finished page out of 100 on content quality, search optimisation, sourcing and expertise signals, technical structure and how easily search and AI tools can cite it. Below 75, the page does not ship. The target is 85.

What does a catch look like?

When the Ledger review was re-researched in October 2026, the first pass recorded that Ledger showed no standalone price for its Recovery Key backup card. The challenge pass read the product data on Ledger's own shop page on 17 October 2026 and found two prices: USD 39 for one card and USD 99 for a pack of three. The challenge has the final word, so the review uses the shop's figures.

The full process, including how it changed from the May 2026 version, is on the methodology overview.

No. Skrumble does not buy hardware wallets, install wallet apps on test devices or send funds through them. Every wallet review is documented desk research, and every source in it carries a date.

That limits what a score can tell you. It measures how a wallet's documented security model, chain support, costs and track record hold up against primary sources. It cannot tell you how the app behaves on your phone, how long a device takes to arrive, or how support treats you after a failed firmware update. When a review describes a setup or signing flow, it is describing the maker's documentation.

For the custody question itself, the SEC's investor bulletin on crypto custody is a good primary reference. It warns that if a third-party custodian is "hacked, shuts down, or goes bankrupt, you may lose access" to your assets.

Our target is at least every six months, and each wallet review shows the date it was last updated. All seven wallet reviews were re-researched between October 16 and 17, 2026 under the four-check process set out on this page.

These events trigger an earlier check:

• a disclosed vulnerability or security incident affecting the wallet, its supply chain or its maker
• a firmware or app change to how keys are created, stored or backed up
• a device price change, or a new fee on swaps or purchases
• networks added or dropped
• a lawsuit, regulatory action or change of ownership

A review older than six months is not necessarily wrong, but check the dates on its sources before you rely on a price or a fee.

Tell us through the contact page, with the claim and the source you think contradicts it. We re-open the primary source. If the review is wrong, we correct the sentence, re-check any pillar score that the fact feeds, move the review's updated date, and record the change with its source in the research file.

A corrected fact does not always move a score. Pricing, for example, is set relative to the other wallets we cover, so a small fee change may leave it where it was. When a score does change, the table on this page changes with it, because both read the same data.

No. The overall score is calculated from the five pillar scores and nothing else, so commission terms have no way into it. Today none of the seven wallet reviews links out with a referral code. The Visit buttons open the wallet makers' own websites.

Some wallet makers run affiliate programmes, and Skrumble keeps a record of their terms. If a review ever links out through a partner link, Skrumble can earn a commission on your purchase, and the Visit buttons on reviews are marked as sponsored links. No wallet maker approves a review before it is published. How Skrumble is funded, and what money is not allowed to change, is set out on how we make money.