Well put. Maybe this type of security shouldn’t be left to obscurity. Perhaps we (mouse in my pocket) make a daughter board that talks IDs to the access device and talks fully open source implementations of secure protocols to the outside.
Im sure it’s possible, just seems like a lot of work when we already have implantable unifi cards 
Also, with the pro reader you can enable both card + a pin# for extra security if you wanted a sort of 2FA to unlock your doors, so even if someone cloned your UID they would also need to know your pin.
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any update?
I’m working on custom hardware and software which will support Desfire (and I’ll include VivoKey/Apex if it will be possible [should be]), but I can’t really promise any date or anything, because lack of time lately. When I have something usable I’ll definitely post it here. My goal is to make everything open-source and provide all the schematics and whatnot for the hardware itself (which I’ll be hopefully able to sell so that ordinary people can get it easily by throwing some money at me).
At the moment I’m focusing only on the Desfire communication itself because I think the rest will be trivial. I’ve already implemented some basic functionality (like non-encrypted communication, device settings, reading UID,…) and I’m now right in the middle (hopefully 
) of the encryption part (handshake; reading encrypted random, XOR, sending another encrypted random,…) and this is the part that sucks the most, because the almighty NXP decided not to provide datasheets (unless you sign NDA, which I won’t because I plan to open-source everything), so I have to reverse-engineer everything (there are a few sources which help quite a lot, but it’s incomplete/hard to test 
).
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Good to know 
what hardware are you using for reading? The pn532?
Fellow hacker I see Yep, pn532, controlled by Espressif hardware (random dev board at the moment, but I plan to use the newest ESP32-S series if it ever becomes a real product) so that if the user doesn’t like my software, they can flash it with their own. I’m optimizing everything from the start to use the lowest power possible because I would like it to be battery-powered (just put it on the wall and pair it with your phone over Bluetooth to your smart home server, which will later use your home WiFi).