On the Core-as-baseline framing
Prime isn’t the next generation evolution of Core. It’s the next device we’ve built, but it’s intentionally a different product with a different architecture, threat model, and target user. We wrote about exactly this transition, and why we moved on from QR air-gapping, in our blog. Worth reading in full for the reasoning, but the short version: QR air-gapping is strong security that asks a lot of the user, and that friction is a meaningful reason self-custody adoption stays where it does.
Prime is a different beast. It’s built around the premise that some users want capabilities a pure air-gapped device categorically cannot provide, like simple ‘one-tap’ recoverability, an app surface, and account-style integrations. QuantumLink exists because those features exist and you’re absolutely right that we intentionally shaped the architecture like this. QL itself is designed to give you airgap-like security over a wireless channel, with a dedicated Bluetooth chip physically isolated from the security processor and quantum-resistant encryption on everything that crosses it. We are only just scratching the surface of what this combo can achieve. We continue to operate on open standards for seeds, Shamir Sharing, and continue our unrelenting dedication to open source and reproducibility.
On your point that the device should be fully usable, verifiable, and complete in an offline air-gapped context: it is, with the exceptions I mentioned where the protocol simply doesn’t allow for an air-gapped equivalent. 2FA is the obvious example. TOTP requires synchronised time and a shared secret exchanged with a remote service, that’s how the protocol works, there’s no air-gapped version of it. Same logic applies to anything else that depends on a connected channel by definition. But for the operations that don’t have that constraint, signing, multisig, seed handling, address verification, you can use Prime fully offline. That path is intact and supported.
On execution speed:
Fair to hold us to delivery, and fair to be impatient, but when you build entirely new operating systems, communication layers, and hardware, all with a small team, things take time.
We had to make some tough decisions to postpone certain features in order to get Prime shipped. The alternative was holding the launch indefinitely, which would have been the wrong call. The device in people’s hands today is a stronger foundation to iterate on than chasing the carrot of perfection.