AQUA Wallet review: a phone wallet for bitcoin, Lightning, and Liquid

AQUA is built by JAN3, and JAN3 launched it on January 3, 2024. Its GitHub page calls it a free, open-source wallet for iOS and Android, released under the MIT license. You can install it from the App Store, Google Play, or as an Android APK from GitHub. There is no desktop version.

The Google Play listing describes it as a way to save in bitcoin and transact on Lightning, Liquid, and Tether USDt, and says it was designed for Latin America. The current release is v0.5.4 from October 1, 2026, which raised the minimum iPhone system to iOS 15.

Under the hood, AQUA uses GDK, Blockstream's Green Development Kit, which version 0.5.3 upgraded to 0.77.9. It also uses the LWK and Boltz libraries.

My rating methodology counts a wallet as Bitcoin-only when it holds or signs nothing outside Bitcoin and Liquid. AQUA's help center says it natively supports USDT only on the Liquid Network. For USDT on Ethereum, Polygon, Tron, or BNB Smart Chain, AQUA hands the job to a swap provider such as SideShift or Changelly.

When you send USDT to an Ethereum address, AQUA sends Liquid USDT to the swap provider, and the provider pays out on Ethereum. When you receive on another chain, the address you see is owned by the swap provider, which then sends Liquid USDT to your AQUA wallet. Your AQUA keys only ever sign Bitcoin and Liquid transactions, which is why AQUA stays in my ranked list on the software wallets page.

Those swap addresses are single-use and expire. AQUA warns that if you reuse one or send to an expired one, the deposit may not credit automatically and you will need to contact the swap provider for a manual recovery.

AQUA is a good first wallet for someone who wants to receive bitcoin, pay Lightning invoices, and hold a small dollar balance without learning about channels. The @aqua.net Lightning Address added in version 0.5.0 lets people pay you without you creating an invoice first.

Pick something else if you want to sign with a hardware wallet, run multisig, or use a computer. Nothing on aqua.net or in AQUA's release notes mentions hardware wallet support. The Blockstream app covers the same Bitcoin, Liquid, and Lightning mix with Jade support and a desktop app, and BULL Wallet signs with several Bitcoin-only devices by QR.

Install AQUA from the link on AQUA's download page, so you get the real app and not a copycat. Then:

AQUA has no Lightning channels of its own. JAN3's launch post says it uses submarine swaps to move between Lightning and Liquid. Lightning payments are swapped to and from L-BTC, the bitcoin balance on Liquid, by a swap provider.

AQUA's release notes name Boltz as a provider, and version 0.5.1 started broadcasting transactions directly to Boltz so short-lived invoices expire less often. Version 0.5.3 added the ability to switch Lightning providers without an app update, and since version 0.5.2 each Lightning transaction shows which swap provider handled it.

Every swap depends on a provider being online. The latest release fixed a Lightning refund that could fail to broadcast and a fee display that could differ from the fee charged, which shows the kind of edge cases a swap-based design has.

The app is free. You pay network fees and swap fees. AQUA's site gives sample fees for sending $100 of USDT: $0.03 on Liquid, $2.00 on Tron, and $8.00 on Ethereum. On Liquid you can pay the network fee in USDT, so you do not need a separate balance for fees.

AQUA also has a marketplace of local services. Version 0.4.2 added MoneyBadger for merchant QR codes in South Africa and ChapSmart for M-Pesa payments in Tanzania, and the site lists a prepaid Dolphin Card. MoneyBadger and ChapSmart are outside services with their own terms.

AQUA's Google Play data safety section says no data collected and no data shared with third parties, as declared by the developer.

Swaps are the privacy weak point. A swap provider sees the payment it handles, and an off-Liquid USDT receive uses an address the provider controls. Some features also use a JAN3 account, and since version 0.4.2 each JAN3 account links to one wallet at a time. For a private balance lookup, connect AQUA to your own Electrum server; my node rankings cover the hardware.

The AQUA repository lists no published GitHub security advisories, and AQUA does not appear in my security incident tracker. Recent releases tightened things: version 0.5.2 removed the copy action from the recovery SeedQR screen, required TLS for custom Electrum servers, and shipped unnamed security updates after AI security reports.

The bigger risk is the one every phone wallet carries. Your keys live on an internet-connected device, so keep only spending money in AQUA and move savings to a Bitcoin-only hardware wallet.

AQUA makes bitcoin, Lightning, and Liquid dollars easy on a budget phone, with open-source code and a no-data-collected label on Google Play. It ranks below the Blockstream app and just above BULL because it has no hardware wallet support, no multisig, and no desktop app, and because Lightning and off-Liquid USDT both depend on third-party swap providers. Use it for spending, and keep your savings somewhere a hardware wallet signs.