Link Search Menu Expand Document
Cybersecurity Research
  1. Chapter III: Methodology
    1. Introduction
    2. Design of the Study
    3. Data Collection
      1. Tools and Techniques
      2. Hardware and Software Environment
    4. Summary

Chapter III: Methodology

Introduction

This chapter of methodology will provide solutions and methods on how to secure the Cryptocurrency Wallets by identifying the necessary security features to protect Cryptocurrency Wallets from hackers and quantifying by providing tools and techniques that can help protect users’ funds.

Design of the Study

Step 1: Identification: Identify the necessary security privacy features for users to interact safely; In this step, security, and privacy features necessary to protect cryptocurrency wallets will be investigated and explored from different research papers and industry standards.

Step 2: Quantification: provide users with a tool that can help them to evaluate the degree of protection that every cryptocurrency wallet has. This will enable cryptocurrency users to make well informed decision when they choose a wallet.

Data Collection

This section will focus on the data collection description from the popular online Bitcoin environment. Then, we will elaborate on the methodological approach and techniques of the data. The objective of the data collection is to comprehend how Bitcoin or cryptocurrency wallets have generated trust among its users despite being unidentified. In this framework, discussion forums have played a critical role in the growth of Bitcoin. This online forum was started by Satoshi Nakamoto for the purpose of communicating with other developers and investors. As of September 2019, Bitcoin Forum has estimated 2.6 million members posting 52 million posts on 1.21 million topics (Marella et al., 2020).

Figure 4 General Statistics of Bitcoin Talk Forum (Marella et al., 2020) General Statistics of Bitcoin Talk Forum (Marella et al., 2020)

In addition to that, they provided several online forums that focuses on cryptocurrency Wallets. They compared different data sources such as online discussion, interactions which can be accessed on an unparalleled scale. It allows us to gather the technological features related to trust in Bitcoin from the users’ own perspectives of things.

Figure 5
Comparisons of Various Online Forums (Marella et al., 2020) Comparisons of Various Online Forums (Marella et al., 2020)

Tools and Techniques

There are a few tools and techniques that will be used on this project; The first tool is the MCDM (Multiple Criteria Decision making) refers to making decisions in the presence of multiple, usually conflicting criteria (Xu et al., 2001). It consists of two techniques that will be discussed which are the weighted method and AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Processing).

Providing weights to criteria has been an important part that needs to be reconsidered. It has been one of the major factors while facing Multi-Criteria Decision Making. The weighted method primarily focuses on two such criteria those being, the qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data to be able to form the more accurate decision making (Xu et al., 2001).

Although, this Analytic Hierarchy Processing method is one of the most applied methods based on pairwise comparisons, the actual number of comparisons is calculated by:

omparisons is calculated by

Where cp = the number of comparisons and n = number of criteria. Security Assessment for Crypto Currency Wallet a =

Crypto Currency Wallet

Hardware and Software Environment

This part shows the different types of hardware and software environment which will be discussed later by providing the tests results, and by evaluating most precisely on all the hardware wallet, mobile, online, web-based, and paper wallets.

Online or Web-based Wallets:

  1. Metamask
  2. Blockchain.info
  3. MEW(MyEtherWallet)
  4. StrongCoin
  5. Jaxx
  6. coin Wallet
  7. Green Address

Hardware Wallets:

  1. Trezor T
  2. Ledger Nano X
  3. Keepkey
  4. Bitbox
  5. ColdCard

Mobile or App-based Wallets:

  1. Coinbase
  2. Electrum
  3. Blockchain
  4. Robinhood
  5. Exodus
  6. Mycelium

  7. CashApp

    Paper Wallets

Summary

To conclude the methodology part, I will be identifying and quantifying the necessary security privacy features for users to interact safely and provide users with a tool that can help them to evaluate the degree of protection that every cryptocurrency wallet has.

This complete set of guidelines will be the structure used to test all the different types of cryptocurrency wallets. These four well known elements are to be used to test online, web based, app based, hardware, and paper wallets. The results of these extensive testing’s, along with screenshots of the wallets and statistical data that will be evaluated in the next chapter.

Table of Contents

Table of contents