Overview
Yoroi is a free mobile wallet that lets you hold, send, and stake ADA from your phone. It is made by EMURGO, one of the three organisations that started Cardano in 2017. You stay in full control of your coins at all times. Only you hold the recovery phrase that unlocks the wallet.
Yoroi is built to be light. Instead of downloading the whole Cardano network onto your phone (which would take hours and gigabytes of storage), it connects to trusted servers in the background so the app opens fast and stays responsive. The same wallet also exists as a browser extension, and the two versions share the same recovery phrase if you want to use both.
Key Features
- A clean home for your ADA. Send, receive, and check your balance in a few taps, with a transaction history that reads like a bank statement.
- One-tap staking. Pick a Cardano stake pool from a built-in list and earn rewards every few days. Your ADA stays in your wallet the whole time. No lock-up, no deposit elsewhere.
- An NFT gallery. View and manage Cardano NFTs in the same place as your ADA, with images displayed directly inside the app.
- In-app token swaps. Trade ADA for other Cardano tokens without leaving the wallet. Swaps are routed through MuesliSwap to find competitive rates.
- Buy ADA with a card. New users can fund the wallet directly with a credit card or bank transfer through Banxa, so you don't need to open an account on a crypto exchange first.
What to Expect
Setting up Yoroi takes about five minutes. You create a new wallet, write down a 15-word recovery phrase on paper, and confirm a few words to prove you have it. The phrase is the only way to restore your wallet if you lose your phone, so it matters more than any password. Keep it offline.
Once you're in, the app shows your ADA balance and a few large buttons for the main actions: send, receive, stake, swap. Staking takes you to a pool browser where you can sort by performance and tap to delegate. Rewards land back in your wallet every five days or so, and you can spend or move your ADA at any moment. Staking on Cardano does not freeze your coins.
If you want extra security, Yoroi pairs with a hardware wallet from Ledger or Trezor. That keeps the recovery phrase on a small offline device while you still use the Yoroi app for day-to-day actions. The wallet is open-source1, available in English and Japanese, and EMURGO maintains the code publicly on GitHub2 alongside IOG and the Cardano Foundation. A dedicated help centre covers setup, recovery, staking, and troubleshooting.
