Hardware Wallets

Hardware wallets like Ledger and Trezor keep private keys inside a dedicated chip that never exports them. Your laptop or phone prepares transactions, but the device itself performs the signing.

Even if your computer is fully compromised, malware can only see what you approve on the hardware screen. That physical confirmation step is the core security advantage over pure software wallets.

Air-gapped setups take this further by signing on a device that never connects to the internet at all. The principle is the same: isolate the key from the environments where attacks actually happen.