With the release of Reddcoin browser wallet, all current Reddcoin Electrum desktop wallets (for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X) are now deprecated. The official wallet web page https://wallet.reddcoin.com will be updated shortly.
The seeds used in Electrum desktop wallets are incompatible with the browser wallet, which means you cannot import seeds from one to the other. Going forward, the browser wallet is the standard and if you are already using an Electrum desktop wallet, please send all your RDDs out of it.
Permanently deprecating the desktop Electrum wallet software seems a big call, purely because they have an incompatible seed format to the browser wallet. The desktop Electrum wallet offers advanced security features such as offline-signing, and I have no intention of sending my entire Reddcoin balance to the web wallet while it is in Beta.
Please consider keeping the Electrum desktop wallets as a useful part of the Reddcoin ecosystem. They are, in my view, the most secure way to store Reddcoin available, given the ability to generate the private keys entirely offline and sign raw transactions on a non-internet connected computer, thereby preserving the cold storage nature of the wallet.
There is no intention to turn off the Reddcoin electrum servers is there? My coins will remain safe for the future provided I keep my desktop electrum seed safe, yes?
amphibious The browser wallet is actually an Electrum client so Electrum servers are definitely here to stay as they are indispensable parts of the Reddcoin infrastructure. The seeds for the current Electrum desktop wallets were implemented before we obtained official Reddcoin namespace for HD wallet (i.e. BIP32) which is why they are incompatible with the seeds generated by browser wallets. Seeds generated by browser wallets are the standard going forward and will be compatible with the Qt wallet 2.0 which will support HD wallet (already implemented and being tested).
The main reason behind deprecating current Electrum desktop wallets is because as they stand right now, they have fairly poor cross-platform compatibility and technically almost all the functionalities that can be implemented in a desktop version can be done in the browser wallet, including your example of off-line signing of transactions. There is no fundamental reason why an Electrum desktop wallet is more secure than the browser wallet. They are both Electrum clients, just implemented in different ways. So really unless there are features which are only possible in desktop versions, there is little reason to maintain and support them.
For proper cold storage, it’s possible to make the Trezor hardware wallet support Reddcoin HD seeds by porting the official firmware. I took a quick look at the code a month ago and I even believe that with certain changes the Trezor can allow staking in cold storage. If there is strong demand for this, it can become the most secure and versatile cold storage solution.