Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have many different Bitcoin wallets to choose from. Not all of those wallets offer the same types of features either. It now appears the Multibit project is no longer supported by the KeepKey team. This news comes as quite a surprise, even though the wallet has not been maintained for some time now. Anyone still using this software should move money out of it as soon as possible.
Truth be told, the end was near for Multibit some time ago. Ever since the KeepKey team took over the company, they haven’t been updating the source code all that much.Not entirely surprising, as they want to focus on the hardware wallet side of things. In an official blog post, the company explains how the original Multibit developers wouldn’t maintain it further. This wallet continued to exist for a full year, but now is a good time to pull the plug once and for all.
Multibit Support is Officially Non-existent
It has to be said, Multibit has an excellent project over the years. That is, when it was maintained and updated on a regular basis. It was a good decision to keep the wallet alive, even though people knew it would eventually cease to exist. Keeping the project alive isn’t feasible, even for the KeepKey team. There is too much work to be done and very few people who can spare the time to solve them. Moreover, the changes to Bitcoin infrastructure and the introduction of SegWit warrant a major overhaul.
KeepKey can’t spare the necessary resources to keep the platform alive for the foreseeable future. It is good they are transparent about it, rather than let the project die a slow and painful death. The wallet needs rebuilding from the ground up and it isn’t worth the effort. Instead, the company will dedicate all resources to maintaining and improving their hardware product. It’s not an easy decision, but it is one made for the greater good.
Existing Multibit users need to export their private keys as soon as possible. This can be done through the wallet itself or by the export utility found in the blog post. It is unclear how many people still use Multibit to this very day, though. Most people have migrated to other solutions quite some time ago. Hardware wallets are the new norm these days and software solutions are slowly waning in popularity. The Multibit source code will not be made available to the public for future maintenance, by the look of things.
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