MyMonero shut down, Monero web wallet alternatives
MyMonero was for years the default answer to "I want a Monero wallet in my browser without downloading the chain." Launched in the early days of Monero, it did one thing well: the server did the scanning, your browser stayed light, and you could send and receive from anywhere. When it shut down in 2024, a lot of people were left looking for the same thing.
What made MyMonero useful
Three things, really. You did not need to run a node. You did not need to install anything. And your keys stayed yours, in the sense that the wallet worked from your private keys without a browser extension holding them. It was the pragmatic option when a full node was too much and a mobile app was not what you wanted.
What to look for in a replacement
Any Monero web wallet worth trusting should pass a few checks:
Open source. If you cannot read the code, you are trusting marketing. A wallet that publishes its source and lets you self-host is making a testable claim, not a promise.
Custody you understand. There are two shapes: the server holds your keys (custodial), or it holds your seed encrypted and you keep the phrase (semi-custodial). Neither is wrong, but the wallet should be honest about which one it is. "Non-custodial" is a word that gets stretched.
Seed shown once, encrypted at rest. Your seed phrase should appear exactly once, at creation or import, and be stored encrypted on the server if it is stored at all.
No third-party scripts. A web wallet is the one place where script bloat is a security issue, not just a performance one. Check the Content-Security-Policy header. If third-party scripts are allowed, ask why.
The honest options today
Full wallets: the official monero-wallet-gui and CLI, Feather Wallet, and Cake Wallet are the gold standard for self-custody. The tradeoff is a full node or a trusted remote node, and a real sync before your balance shows up.
Web wallets: fewer of these survive than people think. The ones that do tend to be closed or semi-open. I built xmrwallet because I wanted the MyMonero shape with the checks above: open source (MIT), the server stores your seed AES-256 encrypted and never shows it after the first time, a strict CSP with zero third-party scripts, and the whole thing is a standard Node.js app you can run yourself. New wallets sync in seconds because the server does the scanning. It is semi-custodial and says so.
Hardware wallets plus any of the above: for larger amounts, nothing beats keeping the keys off the machine entirely.
A closing thought
MyMonero's shutdown is a good reminder that a hosted wallet is a service, and services end. The seed phrase is the durable part. Wherever you land, make sure you can always walk away with those 25 words and restore somewhere else. That is the real test of a Monero wallet, web or otherwise.
If the web wallet shape fits how you use Monero, try xmrwallet or read the code first. Feedback welcome.