MyEtherWallet, Wallet Review

What is MyEtherWallet (MEW)?

Myetherwallet is an open source, Ethereum blockchain based user-interface for the Ethereum community.

Simply to say, MyEtherWallet allows the users to open an address using which they can receive/send ETH from/to another account.

The idea of decentralization is implemented by MyEtherWallet to the fullest as it hands over the complete authority of the account to the holder. Let us know a bit about its origin and have a look how it works.

History of MyEtherWallet

The journey was started back in 2015 as a two-person project. Without a command line, it was not possible to perform a transaction at the advent of Ethereum and MEW came into existence to resolve the point. But it was not that much familiar at that time and was a part-time project.

As the community of Ethereum continued to grow bigger and at a faster rate, the governing body came into contact with the customers and started modifying the project. That is how it started to be a significant part of the Ethereum blockchain.

The steady flow suddenly got changed in 2017.

On average, they had to process 100,000 transactions in a month and they used to receive 20-30 support messages on a daily basis.

By the end of March, they started executing 100,000 transactions per hour and had to face 1000 messages a day! This incredible change was the result of ICO explosion.

In early 2018, it was not a two-man army anymore. MEW was oriented with fresh folks ready to serve all time. It got the entire codebase rewritten and was rebranded with a new name. Now MEW has a team of efficient workers and promises to serve the customer with full capacity.

A distinction between MyEtherWallet and a Bank/Exchange

People not well acquainted with MEW often mix it up with general banks or exchanges.

The purpose and working procedure are totally different than the others mentioned above.

When an account is opened in a bank, personal records of the account holder, password of the account, balances, transaction history etc are kept noted down by the bank. Whereas the user generates a cryptographic combination of numbers: a public key and a private key. A customer enjoys full control over the keys using the browser of his /her computer. The private key does not even need to touch the online platform.

A bank or exchange charges service fee to maintain an account and a considerable amount of transaction fee but a user does not have to count any extra charge for maintenance or to perform a transaction. In order to transact an amount of money, a user has to write a check or to charge the debit card provided that the limit of the amount to be transacted and the number of transaction is predefined by the bank or exchange. But MEW only needs the sender and the receiver to exchange the public key. Plus, the user is at liberty to transact any amount and how frequent it is required.

 Points to be concerned about

Users must be concerned in case of maintaining the keys.

Unlike banks or exchanges, MEW releases complete authority to the user. So it is the account holders who are responsible for taking care of his/her own account. If one loses his private key, the control over the account is lost and there is nothing the MEW team can do about it.

There are a lot of scams and phishing sites that just look like MyEtherWallet, PayPal, and Skrill etc and try to steal your private key. Being a bit careful, the unwanted problems can easily be avoided.

Conclusion

MyEtherWallet has made transaction way easier for the customers.

The security and authority provided by MEW are one of the reasons people are leaning towards Ethereum.

A nice ‘getting started guide’ can be found at this link.