Zen Card: The optimal "hybrid" of hot wallet and cold wallet

Early last month, one of the biggest names in security was hacked: hardware wallet maker Ledger. It is estimated that the hacking mission generated more than 500,000 USD withdrawn from 500 - 1,000 user wallets.
This is not a rare incident. In 2023, crypto projects lost $1.7 billion to hackers, according to data from analytics company TRM Labs.
Ninety Eight's new product Zen Card is an effort to protect users against these wallet attacks. Because as Ido Ben-Natan, co-founder of Blockaid, said: “If users continue to feel unsafe when interacting with crypto applications of all kinds, they will lose motivation to participate and actually use them. this time".

Hacker barrier
In many Asian cultures, "Zen" refers to a state of balance between extremes. And this is also the basic meaning of Zen Card - a neutral wallet product, balancing the two most popular wallets on the market today: hot wallet and cold wallet.
"Zen Card can be viewed as a 'hybrid' of a hot wallet and a cold wallet when it inherits the 'dominant gene' and eliminates the 'recessive gene' of this pair of wallets," said Mr. Nguyen The Vinh - CEO of Ninety Eight.
Hot wallets currently dominate the market with many advantages: free, convenient because they do not have to connect to external devices, and support most blockchains and tokens. But hot wallets easily become targets for hackers, for example when users access hot wallets from phones or computers using public WiFi.
“The security infrastructure of public WiFi is very limited. In addition, when many people connect to the same WiFi network, hackers in that same network can capture and analyze the packets they use. Hackers can also install malicious code on their phone if the phone accidentally has some security hole," Mr. The Vinh said.
According to Mr. The Vinh, these cases do not often happen, but for those who store a lot of assets on hot wallets, it is better to be careful.
Cold wallets solve this security concern by allowing users to not need to directly interact with the key. Specifically, when using a cold wallet, users interact with another application or protocol through a piece of hardware, and this helps make transactions safer.
However, the cost of cold wallets is quite high, ranging from 100-300 USD depending on the type of hardware. Such hardware only supports limited blockchains and token types. In addition, carrying around a cold wallet in the form of a USB is quite inconvenient, not to mention connecting the wallet via bluetooth or cable is also complicated and unstable.
Zen Card was born as an optimal solution for all of the above problems: supports most blockchains and token types, shaped like a bank card so it's easy to carry, signing transactions simply by applying Zen Card to phone, cheap price but security is not inferior to cold wallet. "In some contexts, I feel Zen Card is even safer than cold wallets," Mr. The Vinh said.
Accordingly, the user's key data is not stored 100% on the phone, but half on the phone, half on the Zen Card. “Suppose your phone is not secure enough or you use public WiFi and get hacked, Zen Card can protect your assets. Because if hackers can access and decode the key data on the phone, it is meaningless, because this is not a complete key for hackers to use," Mr. The Vinh said.
This is the difference of Zen Card compared to cold wallets and competitor products on the market.