Popular Bitcoin wallets risk losing support for new hardware devices as critical security bridge stops accepting new devices

Bitcoin HWI, a widely used interface for connecting wallet software to hardware signing devices, is moving toward retirement, while the Rust project its maintainer cited as a promising successor has not yet demonstrated a production handoff.The maintainer of Bitcoin Core’s Hardware Wallet Interface, or HWI, said on Aug. 18 that the project had effectively been in maintenance mode for years and had largely been a solo effort. HWI will no longer accept new devices or features beyond work needed for MuSig2. Once that work is complete, the maintainer expects to make a release that will likely be the project’s last, then keep HWI in minimal maintenance until a suitable drop-in replacement is ready.HWI is the bridge that wallet software can use to discover a hardware device, retrieve public keys, display a receive address and send a partially signed Bitcoin transaction to devices such as Ledger, Trezor, Coldcard, BitBox or Jade for approval and signing. The successor candidate named in the notice, BHWI, aims to preserve HWI-style command output with a Rust implementation.Neither transition is complete. HWI is not archived, no retirement date has been set, and the notice does not say supp...