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At this point there are hundreds of Bitcoin wallets available https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet

Clicking on a wallet reveals some areas where wallets are compared:

  • Control
  • Validation
  • Transparency
  • Secure Environment
  • Privacy

Some excluded wallets are superior in some of these categories than the wallets listed. Is there a formal review process or criteria for wallet inclusion that someone can reference for me?

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    Jamal, just so you know, this question might be contentious. Due to the on-going blocksize debate, accusations have been made about the objectivity of the maintainers of bitcoin.org. Without taking sides, I'd like to let you know to take any answers with a grain of salt.
    – Jestin
    May 18, 2016 at 21:49
  • Thank you Jestin. I am taking no position on the blocksize debate or raising allegations of bias here. Regardless of whether bias exists (or not) it would be helpful for me to know the criteria that is used for listing new wallets.
    – Jamal Wilson
    May 18, 2016 at 21:54
  • @Jestin That's a pretty low accusation, especially since Wallet Review doesn't have anything to do with the blocksize debate. As well as the fact that history has proven them completely right in hindsight, now that the block size debate is over. On the other hand, it makes much more sense to warn against any information on bitcoin.*com*, which promotes attacks on the Bitcoin network, directs newcomers to the absolute worst wallet by definition and accepts money for having a wallet listed at all.
    – Jannes
    May 19, 2016 at 11:46
  • @Jannes, I didn't mean anything by it, I was just concerned over the potential flame-war spillover from other forums. I wanted to head off any answers like "because the bitcoin.org guys are biased" and the like. Newbies don't really need to hear those fights. I don't actually have an opinion one way or the other on that particular site, but I've certainly heard the accusations.
    – Jestin
    May 19, 2016 at 13:06
  • @Jestin I didn't mean to say you made that accusation, just that the accusation itself, whoever makes it, is low. You're right to cut short any such flamewars. Thanks.
    – Jannes
    May 19, 2016 at 16:22

2 Answers 2

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I asked Craig Watkins, Bitcoin.org's wallet page maintainer, to comment. The rest of this answer is his reply.

Currently on bitcoin.org there are 21 wallets listed (including three "hardware wallets").

Bitcoin.org is a community maintained site: https://bitcoin.org/en/about-us

Updates to the wallet listings are submitted as pull requests on github: https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org

and approval for listing is based on community consensus of complying with the criteria listed here: https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org#wallets

The pull requests can be submitted by anyone, but are most often submitted by the wallet developers themselves. Reviews can be performed by anyone, but are usually done by the current bitcoin.org wallet maintainer who offers an opinion on the compliance to each criteria listed. The reviews, discussions, and results for each of the current and past pull requests can be viewed here https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/pulls

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  • This answer is perfect. Thank you for sharing the details.
    – Jamal Wilson
    May 26, 2016 at 11:28
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I don't know all the details, so if anyone has a better answer, please post it.

There are several volunteers that spend a lot of time reviewing and comparing wallets. They have checklists of important points they look at and try to be as thorough and impartial as they possibly can.

As you say, there are now hundreds of wallets, each of which update at least every few months. So as you can imagine it's a lot of work no one is getting paid for. It's also pretty ungrateful work as accusations of unfair treatment of a specific wallet is easily made, while at the same time if they list a wallet that turns out to be even more insecure than they reviewed it, or turns out to be malware and people lose money, then people will also be quick to blame them.

Blockchain.info for example has been notorious for bugs in their wallets that have cost loss of bitcoins in some occasions. They were delisted at some point, leading to a lot of controversy and accusations on the forums. I don't know if they are currently back.

Personally I'm happy they err on the safe side, even though that can be a big nuisance for wallet developers.

I would assume the short answer to your question is that the work simply hasn't been done yet: not all (latest versions) of all wallets have been tested.

As always in open source: you're free to volunteer to help do the work.

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