Ripple invests in Swedish open source start-up Towo Labs
Towo Labs, a Swedish startup aimed at simplifying ‘crypto self-custody’, has announced an investment from Xpring, Ripple’s developer initiative.
Xpring is described as an initiative by Ripple that will invest in, incubate, acquire and provide grants to companies and projects run by entrepreneurs.
Ripple Labs Inc. itself develops the Ripple payment protocol and exchange network.
According to Crypto Digest News, a [cryptocurrency] custodian holds and keeps assets safe — its goal is to minimise the risk of loss or theft and usually also provides additional services like account administration.
Towo Labs is now focused on the development of hardware wallet firmware with support for all XRP Ledger (XRPL) transaction types and a trustless, non-custodial web interface to the XRP Ledger.
NOTE: The XRP Ledger is a decentralised cryptographic ledger powered by a network of peer-to-peer servers to process XRP digital assets — Towo Labs founder Markus Alvila is the creator of the existing XRP Toolkit.
At the outset, Towo Labs will focus on developing hardware wallet firmware with full XRPL support for Ledger Nano S, Ledger Nano X and Trezor T with the aim of making it easier to securely sign transactions.
Open source contributions
All open source code contributions will be subject to the normal code and security reviews of the involved repository maintainers.
Today’s existing firmware only supports XRP payment transactions, which in some cases block further XRPL and Interledger innovation. The new firmware, however, will support the signing of cross-currency payments, trust lines, escrows, orders, payment channels, account settings and so forth.
“With full XRP support among leading hardware wallets, transactions can be prepared from untrusted devices and applications (for example, over the web) before being reviewed and securely signed inside a hardware wallet,” noted the company, in a press statement.
This added support also enables new applications like trustless, non-custodial trading interfaces to the XRPL decentralized exchange, improved self-custody for DeFi applications and hybrid multi-signing schemes requiring signatures from both hardware and software wallets.
The coming updates to the XRP Toolkit seek to achieve a trustless, non-custodial XRP Ledger web interface, where you can prepare and submit any transaction type from any device, signing using the wallet of your choice or one generated with the XRP Toolkit.
In addition to the leading hardware wallets, XRPL Labs’ signing platform Xumm will also be integrated as a signing option.