Wallet safety

An ordinary Bitcoin wallet is dangerous for Atomicals not because it is badly built, but because it is correctly built for a different problem. It sees satoshis and optimises fees.

What a wallet must do

1. Identify coloured outputs. Per outpoint, with the Atomical ID, not as an address total.
2. Exclude them from automatic coin selection. Always, unless the user explicitly chose to spend that asset.
3. Keep a cardinal pool. Ordinary outputs reserved for fees.
4. Preview the allocation. Before signing, show every output, its satoshi value, and its expected coloured assignment.
5. Show the burn figure. Zero should be the normal case, and a non-zero figure should require a deliberate confirmation.
6. Preserve input and output order. Never reorder for canonicalisation.
7. Show the signature hash flag. And refuse flags the user did not expect.
8. Report its data source. Which index, which revision, how fresh.

What a wallet must never do

• Never sweep or consolidate without showing the allocation result.
• Never choose a coloured output for a fee silently.
• Never display a token balance without the resolved Atomical ID available.
• Never round a native quantity using decimals before building a transaction.
• Never ask for a seed phrase or private key to display a balance.

How to test the wallet you use

Test	Pass
Ask it to show your outputs	It lists outpoints and marks coloured ones
Try to send BTC while holding coloured outputs	It excludes them or warns clearly
Build a partial transfer	It shows expected units per output before signing
Build a transfer with a bad change size	It shows a non-zero burn figure and asks again
Check the source	It names the index and its freshness

If a wallet fails the first test, it is not suitable for holding Atomicals. See choose a wallet.

For integrators

Capability discovery matters. Ask the provider what it supports before building a transaction for it, rather than discovering a gap through a signing failure. See wallet integration.