Cowrie Research

aqua-wallet

3 min read

AQUA Wallet

  • Name: AQUA Wallet
  • URL: https://aqua.net/
  • Category: Liquid-and-USDt consumer wallet / Lightning-adjacent payments shell
  • Tags: bitcoin-ecosystem
  • Summary: AQUA Wallet is mostly a Liquid-and-USDt consumer wallet with a thin Lightning wrapper. Keep the note for the rail mix—BTC, Liquid assets, swaps, and dollar balances in one phone app—not because it belongs near the serious Lightning-control notes. The named operator boundary around supported-asset policy, docs/support, third-party integrations, and JAN3-account packaging now lives in jan3.
  • What it does:
    • Offers a free, open-source wallet for iOS and Android
    • Positions the app as a self-custodial Bitcoin and Liquid wallet for sending, receiving, and managing BTC, USDt, and other assets
    • Markets support for Lightning, Liquid, and Tether USDt alongside Bitcoin buying, swapping, storage, and spending flows
    • States that it is non-custodial and that seed phrases are stored only on the user’s device, using Keychain on iOS or EncryptedSharedPreferences on Android
    • Frames the product around everyday financial use, especially for Latin America, rather than only around Bitcoin savings or long-term cold storage
    • Publishes the main wallet code in a public MIT-licensed GitHub repository under the AquaWallet organization
  • Key claims:
    • The homepage meta description says AQUA is a “self-custodial Bitcoin and Liquid wallet designed for fast, private, and easy transactions” and says users can manage BTC, USDt, and assets from one app
    • The homepage says users can “Save in Bitcoin and transact efficiently with Lightning, Liquid, and Tether USDt,” and also says they can swap assets and buy Bitcoin inside the product flow
    • The homepage says AQUA is “The first Bitcoin and Liquid wallet with built-in USDt support” and separately says it supports “Tether USDt native on Liquid and across the most popular USDt chains”
    • The FAQ copy embedded on the official site says AQUA is non-custodial, does not store or access seed phrases, and saves them locally on-device via Keychain or EncryptedSharedPreferences
    • The product positioning repeatedly says AQUA is designed for Latin America and frames the app as a “global passport to financial inclusion”
    • The public GitHub repository describes AQUA as “a free, open-source wallet for iOS and Android”
  • Whitepaper: No canonical standalone AQUA Wallet whitepaper or litepaper surfaced in this pass. The clearest current sources of truth were the official site and the public wallet repository; see ../whitepapers/aqua-wallet-primary-sources-2026-05-01.md.
  • Sources:

Internal linkages

  • Company / operator boundary for supported-asset policy, docs/support, integrations, and the broader account shell: jan3.
  • Stronger wallet operating-model anchor: phoenix-wallet
  • Closer Liquid wallet-and-swap comparison: sideswap

Protocol / company boundary

  • Keep this note on the product surface: the rail mix across BTC, Liquid, USDt, swaps, and the thinner Lightning wrapper users actually encounter in the app.
  • Use jan3 when the sharper question is who ships the wallet, controls supported assets and partner integrations, runs support/docs, and packages account-adjacent workflow like Lightning Address or WapuPay around the experience.
  • That split matters because what does AQUA expose? and which company controls the surrounding distribution and integration shell? are related but not identical questions.

Control surface

  • Read AQUA as consumer packaging over stronger rails, not as a control-plane anchor.

  • The product-layer leverage sits in asset-support policy, swap routing, integration choices, and the app logic that hides the split between Liquid balances and the thinner Lightning path.

  • For the named operator and packaging shell above that product surface, read jan3.

  • Last reviewed: 2026-08-08 UTC

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