Jameson Lopp, co-founder and CTO of Casa, a crypto custody firm has released a test result report on Bitcoin multi-signature hardware signing performance on the Casa blog on Sep. 13. 

The
result shows that hardware crypto wallet devices can handle small,
simple transactions well. However, they have trouble performing once the
transaction becomes complicated. Casa is said to be built upon
geographically distributed multisig, dedicated hardware devices to
secure keys, designed user experience, and client services.


Lopp
pointed out that while the company has no control over the hardware
devices, the goal is to support any device at the end of the day. Thus,
he decided to conduct research and hoped to draw some conclusions and
help multisig software providers better understand the limits of
hardware and customize wallet software for better performance.

Casa
is currently compatible with six hardware including Trezor, Ledger,
Coinkite and Coldcard  The test was done on all the supported hardware
devices and also BitBox.


Lopp set up the test by leveraging  Electrum's
4.0.2 appimage on Debian Linux and created a variety of P2WSH (native
segwit) multisig wallets that use Bitcoin’s testnet and with the
hardware devices plugged in via USB. In each wallet, there was a deposit
of 100 UTXOs.


Lopp created a series of tests to
determine these hardware wallet capabilities when signing
multi-signature transactions of varying complexity. He repeated these
tests and concluded that it’s better and more secure if hardware devices
can show progress indicators for loading and signing. He added that: 



“I
came to really dislike hardware devices that don't show progress
indicators for loading and signing. As such, I highly prefer Coldcard
and Trezor in this respect. BitBox and Ledger are anxiety-inducing
because you have no idea if anything is actually happening.”



When
it comes to overcoming transaction size limitation and delay of
transaction processing time, Lopp suggested that hardware wallets could
try to break up a send into multiple smaller transactions that are below
its limits. 


When the transaction process takes too
long, some devices will lock itself from inactivity. Lopp suggests that
the least device manufacturers could do to avoid such inconvenience is
to disable the screen lock timeout while the device is still working on
the transaction. 


According to Lopp, hardware devices
should also support Partially signed Bitcoin transactions (PSBT) and all
possible valid multisig transactions. He added that: 



“I
believe it's time for hardware manufacturers to start acting like
platform providers and ensure that they are providing robust platforms
that can be used to build a wide variety of solutions.”



There are two steps for hardware devices to follow when signing a Bitcoin transaction, according to Lopp:



“First,
The transaction gets loaded onto the device, it parses the details and
displays them on the screen for user confirmation. These details are
generally the address(es) to which funds are being sent, the amount(s)
being sent, and the fee being paid. Then, Upon user confirmation, the
device signs each transaction input and then returns the signed
transaction to the wallet software.”


source link : https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-hardware-devices-need-to-improve-to-handle-complex-transactions