Support

Why store my Bitcoin on Passport instead of an exchange?

Bitcoin is freedom money; it gives you ownership over your own financial destiny. There is a common expression in the Bitcoin world: not your keys, not your coins!

Exchange hacks and losses of funds are common occurrences in the Bitcoin world, and no exchange is too big to fail. The more Bitcoin owned by a single exchange, the larger the incentive for attackers to try to steal your coins.

By storing your own private keys, you can have true ownership over your Bitcoin while removing the ability for hackers to steal large quantities of Bitcoin from custodians – this strengthens the Bitcoin network!

I’ve tried other hardware wallets before. Why should I try Passport?

For new users, Passport is designed to be intuitive and approachable. The navigation pad and familiar interface make it easy to set up and use Passport. If you’ve previously found hardware wallets to be intimidating or difficult, we think you’ll have a better experience with Passport.

For expert users, Passport offers powerful features like multisig address verification, BIP85 Key Manager, keypad for easy passphrase entry, and much more!

Why is Open Source hardware important?

Bitcoin is Open Source software, and we believe Open Source software should run on open source hardware. Bitcoin necessitates a completely new type of hardware security model – since transactions are immutable, there is no recourse if your Bitcoin are stolen or lost.
Today’s hardware is mostly closed source and uses proprietary designs with confidentiality agreements.

Open Source hardware means that security researchers can more easily identify vulnerabilities in our products. It also means that we can adopt best practices from other Open Source hardware projects – and other Open Source hardware projects can adopt our best practices too! This leads to a healthy, more secure hardware ecosystem and means that your Bitcoin will be safer.

Besides Bitcoin, does Passport support other cryptocurrencies?

No, Passport only supports Bitcoin. We do not have any immediate plans to support other cryptocurrencies, and are laser-focused on building the best Bitcoin hardware wallet.

Does Passport include a mobile or desktop app?

Envoy, our mobile companion app, is thoughtfully designed to offer the best Passport experience. However, Envoy is optional and not a requirement to use Passport in any way.

Passport is designed to work with most popular Bitcoin wallets and services. This ensures that you have the ability to select your preferred software wallet, instead of being forced to use our software or services. And it also ensures that Passport strives for mass-compatibility with the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Is Passport airgapped?

Passport is completely airgapped, with only a camera and microSD slot for communications, no wireless functionality of any kind. This is important because it closes off numerous attack vectors and ensures that Passport can never communicate directly with an Internet-connected device.

Why is Passport assembled in the USA?

Foundation Devices is headquartered in the USA, and we believe it is important to have as close a control over our supply chains as possible. By assembling Passport in the USA, we can ensure that (1) we are on the factory floor and closely overseeing assembly, (2) our manufacturers are held to higher regulatory and transparency standards.

Why should I use Envoy?

Envoy is designed to offer the easiest to use experience of any Bitcoin wallet, without compromising on your privacy. With Envoy Magic Backups, set up a self custodied Bitcoin mobile wallet in 60 seconds, without seed words!

Passport users can connect their devices to Envoy for easy setup, firmware updates, and a simple Bitcoin wallet experience.

What can Envoy do?

Get set up with a new mobile wallet, complete with automatic backups, in 60 seconds. Get guided Passport setup and management and receive notification when a new firmware update is available. You can even install it right from your phone!

Envoy also enables you to receive into your offline cold storage from anywhere in the world, or to initiate Bitcoin spends, ready for authorization by Passport. Envoy will also notify you of company announcements such as blog posts, special offers, security upgrades or new hardware and software releases.

What are Envoy Magic Backups?

Magic Backups are the easiest way to set up and back up a Bitcoin mobile wallet. Magic Backups store your mobile wallet seed (not your Passport seed) end-to-end encrypted in iCloud Keychain or Android Auto Backup. All app data is encrypted by your Envoy seed and stored on Foundation Servers.

Set up your mobile wallet in 60 seconds, and automatically restore if you lose your phone.

Do I need to buy a Passport to use Envoy?

Absolutely not. As well as being the best companion application for use with Passport, Envoy is a fully featured mobile wallet, perfect for securing your smaller day-to-day spending amounts of Bitcoin.

Do I need to pay for Envoy?

No, Envoy’s core features, including mobile wallet functionality, backups, and Passport management will always be free to use. In the future we may introduce paid tiers or subscriptions for additional features.

Can I manage more than one Passport with Envoy?

Yes, there is no limit to the number of Passports you can manage and interact with using Envoy.

Is Envoy Open Source?

Yes, like everything we do at Foundation, Envoy is completely Open Source. Envoy is licensed under the same GPLv3 license as our Passport Firmware. For those wanting to check our source code, click here.

For a comprehensive list of Passport Prime related FAQs, please visit our docs site.

When does Passport Prime ship?

Early Access units are estimated to ship at the end of March 2025. Pre-orders will be fulfilled as soon as all Early Access units are shipped.

What is the Early Access Program?

The Early Access Program (EAP) is a way for you to be one of the very first to get their hands on Passport Prime. The EAP is limited to 1000 units, which at launch will ship with the first beta version of our new operating system, KeyOS. As a sign of our appreciation for being one of the first to test Prime, we are giving all EAP customers 3 free gifts:

1. A lifetime subscription to Envoy+ (details on this page)
2. A free bumper case to protect your device
3. An extended no questions asked 2 year warranty

How do I know an app is not malicious?

Thanks to Passport Prime’s KeyOS operating system Prime has the capability to support any cryptocurrency application. As a small and focused bitcoin-centric team, we have no plans to produce these apps ourselves, but would love to hear from interested developers that want to build or integrate their app so that their customers can leverage our Passport Prime hardware for their assets.

Doesn’t Passport Prime’s multi-functional nature make it less secure?

The multi-functional nature of Passport Prime does bring with it a new set of security challenges, but we have set precautions in place to ensure maximum protection from most theoretical attacks presented by the device’s rich feature set and multiple connectivity options. These include:

• Device hardware and software being open source.
• The user has complete control over which apps they install and run.
• Thanks to KeyOS , the device has full app sand-boxing. No app can communicate with, or see the data of, any other app on Prime without explicit permission from the user.
• Each app receives its own hardened child key, completely removing the need for it to interact directly with the master key of the device.
• All apps built for Prime, including any third-party apps featured in the Envoy app catalog, must be fully open source and reproducible.
• QuantumLink encrypted Bluetooth running on a dedicated chip ensures that even if the chip were malicious, all it receives and sends are encrypted blobs of data.

Can I use Passport Prime without Envoy?

At launch Envoy will be required for firmware updates, but users are free to then connect and interact with their Bitcoin wallets only via alternative applications. Not having the QuantumLink Bluetooth connection with Envoy will limit Prime’s functionality, but we will never prevent users from achieving this.
After launch we plan to add the option for users to update their firmware manually, without Envoy.

How do I install apps on Passport Prime?

Apps are typically installed via the upcoming Envoy app catalog. Thanks to Passport Prime’s QuantumLink Bluetooth, app installation will be a very similar experience to the one you are used to with apps on your phone. Find the app you want in Envoy, tap install, everything then happens automatically over Bluetooth.

How do I know an app is not malicious?

All apps listed in the Envoy app catalog must be open source and fully reproducible. The Foundation team will also give each app a basic functionality check before listing, but due to the hardware level sand-boxing Passport Prime uses, a malicious app cannot access the data from any other app without prior permission from the user. Each app is also given its own child private key and has no access, at any time, to the master key.

Will Passport Prime support all of the existing feature of Passport Gen 2?

Yes. At launch Passport Prime will have Bitcoin feature parity with Passport Gen 2.

What is KeyOS?

KeyOS is an advanced microkernel operating system developed in Rust, designed as a secure, open-source alternative to closed systems like Ledger’s BOLOS. KeyOS enables enhanced resilience and modularity by ensuring processes are self-contained to minimize system-wide vulnerabilities. Learn more about KeyOS in our blog post here .

KeyOS ensures apps run in secure sandboxes, preventing malicious or buggy apps from compromising the system.

KeyOS ensures processes interact through controlled, secure message-passing, reducing attack risks.

What is QuantamLink?

QuantumLink is our encrypted and quantum-resistant secure Bluetooth communications protocol. It enables Passport Prime to communicate seamlessly with the Envoy app on your phone in an extremely secure and trust-minimized way. Learn more with our blog post here.

Doesn’t adding Bluetooth make the device insecure?

The Bluetooth implementation on Passport Prime uses a dedicated chip that is physically separated from the rest of the hardware of the device. All that is sent through the Bluetooth chip is encrypted, meaning that even if the chip was malicious, it cannot decrypt the data flowing through it.

Passport Prime ships with 3 NFC cards. What are they for?

Passport Prime ships with 3 NFC KeyCards and 3 Faraday sleeves to store the cards inside. These cards are used to create a simple and secure 2-of-3 Shamir backup of the Passport Prime master private key. Under the default setup, 2 of the KeyCards secure a share each, with the third being stored securely in the Envoy app on your phone. Advanced users that do not wish to secure a share in Envoy can leverage the third KeyCard to store the third share.

What is a Magic Backup?

Magic Backups are a feature of the Envoy+ subscription service. They store critical Passport Prime private key data in a 2-of-3 Shamir setup:

1. Two shares are stored on the provided NFC KeyCards.
2. The third share is securely stored on your phone and backed up to your iCloud keychain or Android auto-backup through Envoy.

Here’s how Magic Backup works during recovery:

1. Install Envoy on your phone and sign into your iCloud or Google account.
2. Tap a single NFC KeyCard to the back of your Passport Prime.
3. Prime combines the Shamir share from your phone with the share from the NFC KeyCard to restore your master private key on the device.
4. Envoy hashes its mobile wallet seed to authenticate with the Foundation servers and downloads the associated encrypted metadata.
5. Envoy sends this encrypted data back to Passport Prime via QuantumLink.
6. Passport Prime decrypts the data with the restored private key.

Result: All device settings and app data are fully restored, and your Prime looks exactly as it did before.

What is Envoy+?

Envoy+ is a paid subscription service that increases the functionality of Envoy and any connected devices. At launch it will include magic backups for all Prime metadata (see above for details) and priority support. We plan to increase the feature set of Envoy+ significantly over time. This includes exclusive access to future products, Lightning services and educational material.