<p>Hot wallets that are not full nodes and as a result don’t have a local database to query, get the address info by querying a centralized service set up by their creators.</p>
<p>For example ledger comes with a companion app called ledger live that queries ledger.com for the current balance of each address etc. As a consequence they know which addresses you own by monitoring the queries.</p>
<p>If you are talking about ledger/trezor the hardware device, those don’t know and don’t care how much coins are in each address, they are only instructed by the desktop software to perform signing operations and the desktop app handles the rest.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-08-11T11:28:41.030Z
2021-08-11T11:28:41.030Z
Mike D
<p>Yes, a wallet needs to independently read and verify the whole blockchain to know what amounts of money are under its control.</p>
<p>There's no quicker way to do this without some loss of security.</p>
<p>There are mitigations like pruning and caching that avoid repeating work already done.</p>
<p>There are arguably riskier approaches like SPV or lightweight wallets. However, Bitcoin depends on their being a relatively large and healthy community of full nodes.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-08-11T11:06:58.347Z
2021-08-11T11:06:58.347Z
RedGrittyBrick
<p>Let me make sure I've got this correct.</p>
<p>In order to find out how much &quot;value&quot;(sats) an address holds the wallet needs to go through each block in the blockchain and check if it ever received any coins?</p>
<p>Is there a quicker way to do this? Wouldn't a wallet(Trezor, Ledger, Hot wallet app, exchange) need to record &amp; index every public address in the block chain with sats on it to be able to keep track of this?</p>

<wallet>
How does a wallet (Trezor/Ledger/hot wallet) know how many coins are in an address?
Trevor
# How does a wallet (Trezor/Ledger/hot wallet) know how many coins are in an address?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2021-08-11)

Let me make sure I've got this correct.

In order to find out how much "value"(sats) an address holds the wallet needs to go through each block in the blockchain and check if it ever received any coins?

Is there a quicker way to do this? Wouldn't a wallet(Trezor, Ledger, Hot wallet app, exchange) need to record & index every public address in the block chain with sats on it to be able to keep track of this?

**Tags:** wallet


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2021-08-11. Score: 3 | Accepted answer

Hot wallets that are not full nodes and as a result don’t have a local database to query, get the address info by querying a centralized service set up by their creators.

For example ledger comes with a companion app called ledger live that queries ledger.com for the current balance of each address etc. As a consequence they know which addresses you own by monitoring the queries.

If you are talking about ledger/trezor the hardware device, those don’t know and don’t care how much coins are in each address, they are only instructed by the desktop software to perform signing operations and the desktop app handles the rest.


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### Answer by username_2 on 2021-08-11. Score: 1

Yes, a wallet needs to independently read and verify the whole blockchain to know what amounts of money are under its control.

There's no quicker way to do this without some loss of security.

There are mitigations like pruning and caching that avoid repeating work already done.

There are arguably riskier approaches like SPV or lightweight wallets. However, Bitcoin depends on their being a relatively large and healthy community of full nodes.


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