IN STOCK · SHIPS IN 3–5 BUSINESS DAYS · $60 / $70 — $5 US SHIPPING · MADE IN THE USA
CHOOSING YOUR EDITION

Standard or read-only. Which one.

Every edition makes keys the same way, from the same audited engine. One of them adds a switch.

There is no lesser edition.

One generation engine, audited once, in every SOLANAkeystick we ship. Nothing about how your key is born is held back for a higher price — the difference buys a property of the object, never a better key. What is identical across every edition:

The difference: what happens in the drawer.

Your SOLANAkeystick never stores a key. So the risk it carries between ceremonies is not theft. It is substitution. The stick sits in a drawer for years; at some point you plug it into a computer that is already running. If that machine is infected, software on it can rewrite what is on the stick — and the next time you use it, you boot a ceremony that looks exactly like ours and produces a key somebody else can predict.

On the standard edition you close that gap yourself, by keeping the stick away from any running computer between ceremonies. Done carefully, that works. The read-only edition closes it with a physical switch: with the switch set, the drive refuses writes, so software on the host has nothing to write through. It turns a threat you meet constantly — an infected computer — into one that is rare: a person with your stick in their hand.

With the standard stick, integrity is a ritual you repeat. With the read-only stick, it is a fact that persists.

The editions, side by side.

Standard and for Mac are the same physical stick, as are the two read-only editions. You are choosing one thing: switch, or no switch.

STANDARD · $60READ-ONLY · $75 · recommended
Generation engineIdenticalIdentical
Keys stored on the stickNeverNever
Keys you can generateUnlimitedUnlimited
Can software change the stick?Yes, on an infected machineNo — the drive refuses
Keeping it genuineKeep it off running machinesSet the switch. It stays true.
Tested before sealingWritten, read back, checkedWritten, read back, checked, then a write attempted and refused

Buy the read-only edition · $75   Buy the standard edition · $60

Our recommendation: buy the read-only edition.

The standard stick is safe when used as directed. The trouble is that "as directed" is a rule you have to keep for as long as you hold the key — and the reason you generate offline is that you do not want your future self's memory to be load-bearing. Fifteen dollars turns a rule you must remember into a property of the object. Choose read-only if you expect more than one ceremony, you are generating for family or a business, or the balance is large enough that you would rather it not depend on your own discipline.

What read-only does not do.