Feather: a Monero desktop wallet built around verifiable releases

A wallet that expects to run somewhere awkward

Feather is a free Monero desktop wallet for Linux, Tails, macOS and Windows, written in C++ with the Qt framework. The emphasis in the project description is on smallness and speed: it runs well on any modern hardware, including virtual machines and live operating systems.

That list of environments is more informative than it looks. A live operating system means a machine that boots from removable media and holds nothing permanent, and a virtual machine means a sandbox where you may not want to trust the host. A wallet that has to work in both places cannot depend on the assumptions a normal desktop application makes about persistent configuration, and it cannot assume it owns the disk.

The other positioning claim is about who it is for. Feather is described as beginner friendly while also catering to advanced Monero users, with a feature set that is on par with the official command line wallet. That is a specific and unusual claim for a GUI project: the reference implementation for a privacy focused coin is a command line tool with a lot of knobs, and the argument here is that a desktop client should not be a stripped down subset of it.

The project also positions itself as a testing ground for experimental features that may later be adopted in the reference wallets, which is a candid way of saying that Feather is where new Monero functionality gets tried before it becomes official.

Sane defaults that can be tightened

The configuration philosophy is stated in one line: ships with sane defaults that suit most users, but can also be configured for high or uncommon threat models.

This is the usual shape for a wallet, and the interesting part is the second half. The settings that matter for a privacy coin are rarely about the interface, they are about what the wallet does with your network identity and your keys, and a GUI that hides all of them is a GUI that makes a security decision on your behalf without telling you.

The documentation is hosted at docs.featherwallet.org, including a features guide, an installation guide and a page on the release signing key. The readme itself is short and points there for anything operational, which is normal for a project that treats its documentation site as the primary interface for users and its repository as the source.

Support channels are the same set you would expect from a privacy focused project: a Matrix room, and IRC. If you need help with your wallet, the instruction is to use Matrix or IRC rather than to open an issue, since a wallet problem is often a local configuration problem that needs your machine's context.

Verify the download before you trust the wallet

The project recommends that you verify downloads with GPG, and releases are signed with the release signing key documented on the docs site. The fingerprint is published in the readme:

8185 E158 A333 30C7 FD61 BC0D 1F76 E155 CEFB A71C

Publishing the fingerprint in the readme rather than only on the documentation site is the useful part, because it gives you a second source to compare against. If a mirror, a CDN or a chat message gives you a different fingerprint, you have something to check.

There is a second layer beyond GPG. The project publishes bootstrappable release builds, with the instructions for running one in `contrib/guix/README.md`, and release attestations live in a separate repository, feather-sigs. A bootstrappable build means you can rebuild the binary from source and check that it matches what was published, which closes the gap that a signature alone leaves open: a signature proves who signed it, not that the signer built it from the code you can read.

The release policy itself is a document in the repository, RELEASE.md, and the maintenance arrangements are described in MAINTENANCE.md. For a wallet, having the release and maintenance rules written down rather than implied is worth more than it would be for an ordinary application, because the failure mode of a wallet is not a crash.

The build is a Guix invocation behind a Makefile

The repository is set up around CMake, with a top level CMakeLists.txt, a `cmake` directory, a `src` directory for the application code, a `monero` directory that is the upstream Monero code as a submodule, an `external` directory for third party sources and a `utils` directory. There is also a `contrib` directory that holds the release tooling.

The Makefile is deliberately thin, because the real work happens in Guix:

build:
	@./contrib/guix/guix-build

attest:
	@./contrib/guix/guix-attest

verify:
	@./contrib/guix/guix-verify

clean:
	@./contrib/guix/guix-clean

Four targets map onto the release story: build produces the binary, attest produces the attestations that live in the feather-sigs repository, verify checks a downloaded artifact against those attestations, and clean tidies up. The default goal is build, and the same Guix scripts back the bootstrappable builds described in the documentation.

Doing the release build through Guix rather than through a package manager is what makes the reproducibility claim meaningful. A Guix build pins every dependency, including the C library and the compiler, so two people building the same source tree should get the same artifact. For a wallet, where the binary is the thing holding your keys, that is the difference between a supply chain story you can check and one you have to take on faith.

Where to ask, and how to report a problem

The community channels are listed explicitly. Matrix is at the #feather:monero.social room, and IRC is the `#feather` channel on OFTC. If you do not have an IRC client, the readme points at a webchat URL for the same room on that network, and it advises that if you do not receive a response immediately you should idle in the room. There is also a dev mail address at [email protected].

Development guidance is in HACKING.md, and the readme strongly recommends joining the Matrix or IRC channel if you are hacking on Feather, with the reason given plainly: idling in the channel is the best way to stay updated on best practices and new developments.

That is a small cultural detail that says a lot about how the project works. In a codebase where a change to the wallet can affect how keys are handled, much of the useful knowledge is in the maintainers' heads, and the channel is where it lives. The instruction to idle rather than to ask and wait is the social protocol that keeps it discoverable.

Security problems have their own path: SECURITY.md is the file to read for how to report a vulnerability, which keeps bug reports about weaknesses off the public tracker.

BSD-3 terms and a gap between tags and commits

Feather is free and open source software licensed under BSD-3, with the licence file at the root of the repository and the copyright line reading 2020-2026 for the Monero Project. The default branch is `master`, and the repository is not archived.

The licence matters more here than it does for most desktop applications. A permissive three clause licence means you can read the whole wallet, audit the key handling yourself, and fork it without negotiating, which is a reasonable foundation for software that holds money.

The release history is where the picture is mixed. Version 2.6.8 was tagged on 2024-09-17, 2.7.0 on 2024-10-11 and 2.8.1 on 2025-04-14, and the last push was on 2026-10-17, with work continuing on `master` well after the newest tag. The project documents how it is maintained in MAINTENANCE.md and what the release policy is in RELEASE.md, which is where the explanation for that gap lives.

Practically, that means if you are evaluating Feather today you should check what the recent commits changed and whether a tag is close, since the downloadable releases come from the tags rather than from the branch tip.

Editorial conclusion

Feather suits a Monero user who wants a small GUI wallet, runs it on a live USB system or inside a virtual machine, and cares enough about supply chain hygiene to check the release fingerprint or build from the Guix recipe. It is a poor fit if you need a phone wallet or a browser extension, since neither is what this project is, and it is a poor fit if you want a steady stream of tagged releases, because the newest tag is 2.8.1 from 2025-04-14 while the last push was on 2026-10-17. Before you install, verify the download against the fingerprint `8185 E158 A333 30C7 FD61 BC0D 1F76 E155 CEFB A71C`, and read MAINTENANCE.md and RELEASE.md to understand who decides when a release happens.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. feather-wallet/feather on GitHub
2. License: BSD-3-Clause
3. Project website
4. README
5. Releases