The Cardano blockchain has a vibrant community that provides support to the network and helps with the development of multiple solutions. The community usually provides suggestions, makes proposals and helps in the development of applications on top of the Cardano blockchain. Community wallets have emerged as some of the popular community-led initiatives on the network.

What is a Community Wallet?

Community wallets are just as the name suggests: by the community and for the community.

Community wallets are developed based on the participation of the community and using a democratic approach. They help bring forth the aspect of decentralization as these platforms form a single interactive system based on the suggestions of multiple Cardano community members instead of having a single individual making the rules.

A Community Wallet is one whose entire road to launching is built off the recommendations of the community. For example, if the community raises numerous concerns that a certain Wallet X is not getting the gradual updates it needs, the team or devs within the community can come up with a beta version, Wallet Y, that focuses on this update feature that the community wants.

The Cardano Community Wallet Ecosystem helps the larger project team build alternative user-owned wallet stacks for seamless transactions. Having a community wallet ecosystem helps bring together the community-driven approach championed by crypto projects. It also helps remove any doubts of Cardano creating a monopoly in their wallet ecosystem.

Through a dedicated community wallet ecosystem Cardano can focus on the openness and transparency synonymous with their network to come up with wallets that drive the long-term sustainability of the project. The community is paramount to driving the Cardano network ahead of its competition, ergo the need of giving them their dedicated wallet ecosystem.

Top Community Wallets

Nami

Nami wallet promises its users a chance to experience Cardano to the fullest. To achieve this, the Nami Wallet has a non-custodial browser-based wallet extension for users to interact with the Cardano blockchain.

This community wallet performs multiple functions like sending and storing multiple assets, delegating, minting tokens, using multi-sigs and much more. The wallet’s extension gives users a chance to stake or delegate your ADA to pools. External staking interfaces can be built on websites, where Nami can be connected to.

As a community wallet, Nami is completely free to use and open-source. The community participates in funding the project and keeping its development up through donations to Berry and Project Catalyst.

Eternl (Formally CCvault)

Eternl is dubbed ‘A Cardano light wallet for the Cardano community.’  This wallet is developed to meet the requests and/or suggestions of the Cardano community for a fully functioning modern web wallet.

Eternl is unique in that they implement the features requested by the community to help keep the innovative spirit alive for both Cardano aficionados and newcomers alike. Some of the leading community suggestions that set them apart from other browser wallets include NFT display, better token processing, address book, and much more.

The dev team behind ccvault.io is keen to see the platform grow exponentially with plans to have among other features:

• multi-delegation (stake pool portfolios)
• Catalyst registration
• DApps integration (already talking to projects)
• advanced power user features: custom transaction builder
• Smart Contract support

Typhon

Typhon is your gateway to Cardano as a community member since it provides you with all the features needed to interact with the blockchain. The wallet is fully compatible with existing ADA wallets and is currently available as a web extension with dApp support and a light weight web wallet for on-the-go wallet requirement.

Typhon has multiple unique features for a community wallet such as:

• Staking – You can stake ADA to a pool of your choice and earn safe ADA rewards.
• NFTs – You can receive, send, or view NFTs inside this wallet.
• Multi Account Feature – Store ADA in totally different wallet accounts without managing multiple seed phrases
• Multi Delegation – Delegate to multiple pools of your choice with multi-accounts

In addition to these, Typhon is working on multiple other exciting features aimed at making it the wallet of choice for the Cardano Community.

GeroWallet

GeroWallet is a next-generation Web3 wallet named after the Italian polymath, Gerolamo Cardano. This wallet leans towards the traditional functionality seen in other Web3 wallets with an additional feature where users can purchase digital assets using fiat.

Other features on GeroWallet include the ability for users to swap, stake, and margin trade synthetic assets. The team has envisioned a wallet that empowers individuals to access Decentralized Finance (DeFi) technology through a “Swiss army knife” kind of features.

Flint

The Flint Wallet is a light wallet that is more DeFi and NFTs centric. With a lightweight and user-friendly design, Flint allows users to easily manage multiple assets from different chains. Flint has native support for interoperability standards that provides a smooth experience on multiple websites on Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

Through their NFT support feature, you can browse your collection without ever leaving your wallet. For NFT minting, Flint is able to connect to any NFT marketplace or minting service dApp that supports the dApp Connector standard.

Other Flint wallet features include:

• dApp connector – Interact with smart contracts
• Hardware wallets support – Securely store and handle your crypto using hardware wallets
• Multi-platform – Available for different operating systems through multiple browsers.
• Multi-chain – Currently, works in Cardano and is extending to support other networks

Looking Forward

With their standalone community wallet ecosystem, Cardano is transforming the functionality and purpose of crypto wallets by giving the community an open-source code-base built and designed with them in mind.

The community wallets mentioned above serve as multipurpose tools that can hold various Cardano assets and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The openness seen on the Cardano Community Wallet Ecosystem is an indicator of the long-term sustainability of the network. The ecosystem boasts of openly accessible products, an open and collaborative culture, open ownership, and empowering community models.

In the cryptosphere, products might die, but communities will always thrive and Cardano’s community wallet ecosystem is an example of how to build a meaningful and empowered community.

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