More than a billion people have tried cryptocurrencies and more than half a billion actively use them. Nearly 100,000 users already hold millions in crypto assets. Today, when we talk about the security of crypto assets, hardware wallets are the most reliable option. Most available devices are low-quality products that break often, require regular updates and are complicated to use. Would you really want to store millions on such devices? Hardware wallets today are like mobile phones in the Nokia era. There is no iPhone for hardware wallets. But RNDM Company is building it!
A post-doc in quantum physics from Max Planck (Neven Šantić), an award-winning artist who led product development at a successful product company in Germany (Hrvoje Hiršl), and an experienced expert from the media and marketing industry (Bernard Ivezić) came together in early January 2024 to talk about entropy, random numbers and startups. The conversation quickly expanded to the possibilities of commercializing an art project, alternative uses of lasers, NFTs and various quantum phenomena.
The first meeting left more questions in the air than we had answers. But after several brainstorming sessions, we realized we wanted to find a practical way to scale quantum technologies. That is how RaNDoM, or RNDM Company, was born.
Since the target group most aware of cybersecurity challenges—and the threats posed by quantum technologies—is the group made up of cryptocurrency owners, we decided that the concrete product we would develop should be one they use. We proposed several hypotheses about what this could be, and the one that emerged with the best potential market impact was: the first hardware crypto wallet protected by the power of quantum technologies!
Inspired by the GameBoy, which perfected the gaming experience, we code-named our development project QuantumBoy, aiming to perfect your experience of storing valuable digital assets.
Problem
According to the Boston Consulting Group, more than a billion people worldwide have already tried cryptocurrencies, more than half a billion currently own them, and nearly 100,000 people around the world hold crypto assets worth over a million dollars. These numbers are growing by up to 40% per year and are expected to continue growing at that pace until 2029. This market growth is further supported by the entry of the world’s largest financial players into the blockchain and crypto industries—such as Fidelity and BlackRock—as well as announcements from U.S. and European exchanges that they are moving toward asset tokenization. Increasing amounts of assets will need to be stored not in physical but in digital vaults.
The safest way to store cryptocurrencies, as digital assets, is in a hardware wallet. But that market is in a phase similar to the mobile phone market during the Nokia era, before Apple invented the iPhone. Qualitative market research among hardware wallet users in Croatia and abroad—from the most experienced to beginners, from people in the crypto industry to those who treat it only as a hobby—showed us, with a 100% response rate, that everyone uses some form of existing solution “because they have no alternative.” Competitors in this market are plentiful.
However, they all offer, roughly speaking, “cheap solutions,” priced on average between 20 and 50 dollars, but they often break and they are poorly developed in terms of hardware, software and firmware, easy to hack and difficult to use. And this leads to the core problem: digital assets are becoming more numerous and more valuable, yet the solutions available for storage focus solely on being as cheap as possible, neglecting all other user needs. Not everyone will keep their car in a garage, but many people will—and there are many of them. Today, more and more people use crypto and have increasingly valuable digital assets, yet the hardware wallets they can buy are unsafe, complicated to use and prone to failure.
Solution
The solution is to move away from the lowest possible price and create a product that builds user trust and is simple to use. This is the essence of our product, developed under the code name QuantumBoy—the first hardware cryptocurrency wallet protected by the power of quantum technologies.
We are not the first in the world to come up with this idea. A marketing company once developed its own concept of a quantum-secured hardware wallet. It received significant public attention and attracted many potential buyers, who unfortunately discovered that it was only a marketing concept—not a real product they could buy. Large corporations also experiment with such technologies, but these projects usually end up in software-hardware “graveyards.”
RNDM wants to bring to hardware wallets the level of simplicity, quality and security for which Apple is known, giving digital asset owners peace of mind. To guide our product development, we brought in Ivan Stanković, a senior programmer who spent the last several years in Berlin working on infrastructure projects for the Ethereum Foundation, as an advisor for Web3 and cryptography.
Our hardware cryptocurrency wallet has thus taken clearer shape:
- it uses quantum technology to ensure true randomness in generating cryptographic keys, setting a new industry standard
- its development is based on security-led development, ensuring transparency and prioritizing security, which is crucial for the success of a wallet
- it provides multiple layers of user-data protection through various hardware and software security solutions
- it enables worry-free usage with solutions such as 3-key pairing and Shamir sharing
- it is completely independent from cloud services
- it applies high-end design, combining top functionality with aesthetically appealing form—following the standards set by Apple in its field
Team members
The RNDM Company team consists of three members: Hrvoje Hiršl (CEO & creativity), Neven Šantić (CTO & quantum tech), and Bernard Ivezić (BDO & growth). In March, Web3 and cryptography advisor Ivan Stanković also joined the team.
Motivation for application and vision for the end of the Nuqleus program
For us, there was no doubt that we should begin developing our startup precisely through Nuqleus, as RNDM Company is based on quantum technologies, which fall within the deeptech domain, and Nuqleus specializes in supporting startups aiming to commercialize deeptech innovations. Conversations with previous cohorts showed that they received excellent support from the Nuqleus team, significantly expanded their knowledge and met many other teams, and they were able to learn from their experiences. Additionally, Nuqleus has an outstanding network of partners and collaborators, giving us excellent networking opportunities essential for the successful development and growth of a startup.
By the end of the Nuqleus program, we aim to develop a prototype of our quantum technology and refine our development strategy in terms of the technology and key people required for its realization, so that we can be ready to seek funding for the development of an MVP. In parallel, based on market research, we have developed an initial business model and we are preparing our marketing and sales strategy. As part of this, we are also exploring initial partnerships that could support and/or improve our business model.
