Build on Trezor: Join Us in Scaling an Open-Source and Secure Future

Transcript

Hello everyone. Thank you for being here. Uh great to meet you. So, uh let's talk uh about something we've been working on Trezor uh for a long time. Uh but before I get to the solution that I want to present here, uh let me ask ourselves a question. Are all of our assets really secured? I've been asking this question for a long time. Let uh let's take a look on what the ecosystem produce. Every week, every single week, builders build.

They build new standards, new chains, new protocols, or new features. But here is the thing. If you want to use some of these features, you need to step outside the secure environment. You always uh you often need to use some other solution than hardware wallets. And I think that this is the problem. We are effectively pushed outside of the secure environment just to access what the ecosystem has to offer.

We are trading accessibility to new things for security. And I think that this is the bad trade-off to make. If you are a builder, you might have experienced this as well. That you build something great. You want the best security for your users possible. >> [snorts] >> You asked us if we can implement this solution. And often we couldn't do it. You asked us when will we support your features you your feature. And the same the very same question we get asked by many of users

all around the world. Behind me on the wall, there is a wall from there is a there are posts from various people, real people on various platforms. And they were pretty much asking the very same question. When will we support some new feature? And often the answer to that was very uncomfortable to me because too often the answers were denying. And then we realized something very uncomfortable. That we were the one who were stopping the innovation.

We were we were the one who was the bottleneck. And that was quite hard realization for us. But it wasn't a lack of ambition. Because majority of these features were pretty valid and we wanted ourselves to implement them. But the it was a structural problem. At Trezor, every line of code needs to be reviewed internally. So, every line of code that we push to our users, we need to go through.

And in order to do that, we need to have a deep expertise in the field. And that is that is simply not possible if you have a finite team and infinite incoming requests. Every feature that we say yes to meant that we said no to something else. There were constant trade-offs. Every change in our monolithic architecture was a big change. Because adding one feature meant touching almost everything. And every change that we do in Trezor firmware needs to be very like delicate operation so we don't

break other parts of the firmware. Last, the hardware has its hard limits. And even if we were capable of implementing everything, the hardware is stopping us. The flash uh storage is finite and we just simply couldn't fit everything there. We were trying to scale the innovation inside the monolithic architecture. And that simply doesn't work in current uh quick quick growing environment.

But things used to be different back then. And to better prove my point, let me take you back in time, specifically to the year 2012. Back then, the whole crypto ecosystem was Bitcoin only. And back then, that was the time that our founders called Satoshi and Stick wanted to better secure their assets, their Bitcoin. And they came up with the standard BIP39, uh better known for majority of you as a seed words.

They proposed this uh standard. Community took it, uh refined it, and then together with the community, it was accepted. And now the seed words are used by millions of users all around the world. On top of the BIP39 standard, uh with the open source ethos uh in in our heads, the very first hardware wallet was created, Trezor Model One. This started the new the whole new industry of hardware wallets.

And the important thing here is that like we started with the open source ethos. That means that the the whole code is accessible to all people all around the world. And when the community saw it, they immediately came and started to improve the product together with us. They started to create new features. They started to find new bugs. And together with the community, the product grew. One of the great examples on how community contributed to the product was 2015 where Ethereum emerged because the whole Ethereum uh feature

that are currently that is currently in the in the Trezor was made by the community, by the external contributors. Fast forward to 2025. Uh last fall, we released our flagship product, Trezor Safe 7, with first open source secure element. As you all know, the ecosystem grew and it grew rapidly together with the community and thanks to the community, Trezor grew as well.

However, open source alone and community contributors are alone are not enough if the architecture on which they build new things cannot scale. And then we realized that we need a fundamentally different approach to stay on top of the game with the community. So, we decided to change that. And we did. Trezor firmware goes with modular.

We've built an open architecture, an open platform on which anyone can build, ship, and maintain their own application. Let me now explain you how does it work. On all of our devices, uh there is a there are basic modules that makes Trezor hardware wallet a secure device. All the transport uh functionalities or the security functionalities, cryptographic things, and others.

We On top of that, there are built-in apps. The most used apps like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others uh that are accessible for users anytime. Together, we call it core firmware. On top of that, on-demand apps will be running. Uh and they will be dynamically loaded into the firmware if user needs them.

Let me now tell you how does the building on Trezor looks like. First of all, you have the idea. You are the experts in your field. We will provide you with with all the tools you need in order to start building. All the SDKs, APIs, docs, and tools. No hardware is required because we also have the emulator, so you can start building your application without hardware.

Then the application will need to pass UX, code, and security review because we need to maintain some quality bar for our users. Then the Trezor will sign the application and then will be then it will be released to all users all around the world. The model is quite simple. You are the experts, we are not. We are just providing the platforms on which you can build. We will provide you all the all the necessary tools that you need.

From the user experience, almost nothing is changing. >> [snorts] >> No none of the complexity is visible for the user. There is no app catalog that the user needs to browse through. There are no manual updates. So, people don't need to care about updating their application to be on top of the security. It just works. Under the hood, the apps are dynamically loaded when user needs them.

So, for the user, Trezor behave exactly like before, except now it supports much more. Let me now recap recapitulate on what this actually changes. First of all, uh we are introducing the faster integration or the the features will ship to the users much faster. So, your users can be secured since day one.

Secondly, the solution basically removes all the hardware constraints because as the apps are dynamically loaded into the into the device, uh there is there are almost no flash space constraints. Last but not least, uh there is it is higher security. Uh that means that one bug in one application cannot affect any other application. The isolation here is structural. It's not just a policy. By firmware modularization, we are getting back to our roots to the community-driven approach that has been and still is

one of the most important things in our company. This effectively means that Trezor is not just longer just a product. It's evolving to a platform. And what gets built on top of this platform, that's entirely up to you. Let's build the secure crypto infrastructure together, and if you already have some ideas what to build, how to contribute, reach me out after the talk.

Thank you very much.