Cold storage that you'll still trust in a decade.
Cold storage isn't a product — it's a workflow. Generate keys on an air-gapped machine, watch balances online, sign transactions offline.
A complete cold-storage workflow for Ravencoin.
Cold storage is the practice of holding keys on a device that has never touched, and will never touch, the internet. For Ravencoin this is straightforward — the wallet supports watch-only wallets, PSBT-style offline signing, and hardware-device pairing — but it is a workflow, not a single click. This guide walks through the full setup, the day-to-day operation, and the pitfalls that turn 'cold storage' into 'lost coins'.
Generate a seed on a machine that has never touched the internet. Export the master public key. Watch balances on your everyday machine. Sign offline. Broadcast online.
That is the entire workflow. Everything below this section is detail on each step. The principle is simple: the machine that holds the signing key never sees the network, so even a fully compromised online machine cannot move funds. The trade-off is convenience — every outgoing transaction is a multi-step process — which is why cold storage is for amounts you don't move often.
Step 1: Generate the seed on an air-gapped machine
Start with a clean machine that has either never been online or has had its network hardware physically disabled. A cheap laptop with the Wi-Fi card removed is fine; a Raspberry Pi booted from a fresh SD card and never connected is fine; a dedicated hardware wallet is best. Install Electrum RVN from a copy of the Electrum RVN installer transferred to the offline machine, create a new wallet, write down the 12-word seed on paper or stamped metal, and set a strong password.
- Air-gapped means no Wi-Fi, no Ethernet, no Bluetooth ever.
- Install the Electrum RVN binary from the published download page and transfer it on a clean USB.
- Use a fresh storage medium so the offline machine starts from a known-clean state.
- Write the seed before anything else; do not leave the setup screen without the backup.
- Stamped metal beats paper for decades; both beat a digital backup.
On the offline machine, open Wallet → Information → Master Public Key (xpub). Copy it onto a clean USB drive — text file only, no executables. On your everyday online machine, install Electrum RVN and create a new wallet from the xpub instead of a seed — choose "Use a master key" and paste the xpub. This is a watch-only wallet: it can show balances and history, build transactions, and verify deposits, but it cannot sign anything. Even total compromise of this machine cannot move funds.
When you want to spend from the cold wallet, build the transaction on the online watch-only wallet exactly as you would on a normal wallet. Pick the destination, set the amount, set the fee, and instead of broadcasting, choose "Sign and broadcast" → "Save as PSBT" (Partially Signed Bitcoin Transaction format). Save the PSBT file to a clean USB drive.
Step 4: Sign offline, verify the destination on the offline screen
Move the USB drive to the offline machine. Open the PSBT in Electrum RVN, review the destination address and amount on the offline screen carefully — this is the entire point of the workflow — and sign. The signed transaction is written back to the USB drive. Disconnect the USB before plugging it into any online machine again to limit two-way data flow.
- The destination shown on the offline machine is the address that will be paid.
- Verify every character if the amount is meaningful — typos and clipboard hijacks are real.
- Sign on the offline machine only after the destination is confirmed.
- Never re-use the same USB drive in both directions without wiping it.
- Better: one USB for offline→online, one USB for online→offline, never crossed.
Back on the online watch-only wallet, import the signed transaction and broadcast. The Ravencoin network confirms it in roughly a minute. The signing key never touched the online machine; the online machine never had the power to move funds without your offline approval.
For most people, a hardware wallet (Ledger or Trezor) is a simpler cold-storage solution than a dedicated air-gapped laptop. The same separation applies — keys on the device, transactions built on the host, destinations confirmed on the device screen — without the workflow overhead of moving files between two machines. Pair the device with Electrum RVN and you get cold-storage-grade key handling with day-to-day usability.
What cold storage gives up
Convenience. Cold storage is for amounts you don't move often — the long-term hold, the treasury, the multi-year position. Pair it with a small hot wallet for the balance you actually spend. A common ratio: 90% in cold storage, 10% in a hot wallet on the desktop, and only the small float you'd be willing to lose ever travels to a phone.
Cold storage defends against one specific class of attack: remote compromise of the machine that holds your keys. A keylogger, a malicious browser extension, a clipboard hijacker, an unpatched RCE vulnerability — none of them can sign a transaction if the key never touches an internet-connected device. Cold storage does not defend against physical theft of an unprotected seed backup, social engineering that gets you to type the seed yourself, or coercion. Those need separate controls: a passphrase on top of the seed, geographically distributed backups, and a clearly written succession plan.
- Protects against remote/online attacks on the signing device.
- Does not protect against physical theft of a plaintext seed backup.
- Does not protect against social engineering or coercion.
- Combine with a BIP-39 passphrase and a written succession plan for full coverage.
The online side of a cold-storage setup is a watch-only wallet imported from your offline wallet's master public key (xpub). Electrum RVN supports this directly — create a new wallet, paste the xpub, and the wallet can show balances, history, and build unsigned transactions, but cannot sign anything. That separation is the entire point: the online machine can be fully compromised without exposing a single private key. Pair the watch-only wallet on a daily-driver desktop with the signing key on a hardware device or an air-gapped laptop, and you get the best of both worlds.
Maintenance over the years
A cold-storage setup needs surprisingly little maintenance, but the maintenance it does need is non-negotiable. Test the recovery path at least once a year by restoring the seed onto a fresh device and confirming the balance matches. Replace the signing device on a schedule — hardware wallets last for years but are not eternal, and a device that fails to boot during an emergency is worse than no device at all. Re-verify your written seed backup is still readable; ink fades, paper degrades, and steel backups protect against fire but not against being misplaced.
Frequently asked
Continue with Electrum RVN
- Ledger Ravencoin — hardware signer for cold setups
- Trezor RVN — alternative hardware signer
- Ravencoin multisig wallet — split keys across devices
Run your own Ravencoin wallet.
Open-source, lightweight, and built for the desktop user who wants real control over keys and assets. Download the wallet directly from our download page — signed installers for every operating system.