Wallet of Satoshi is available in the US but balances & transactions are public \ stacker news ~lightning

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Wallet of Satoshi is available in the US but balances & transactions are public

3239 sats \ 10k boost \ 32 comments \ @k00b 8 Oct lightning

They released early today (they are based in Australia):

They are using Spark to provide customers with a lightning wallet. Spark is trustodial (h/t @justin_shocknet) but they've also made the weird choice of making all customer balances and transactions visible via a public explorer as pointed out by @theinstagibbs.

This might not be a big deal if it were hard to determine a receiver's Spark address, but any bolt11 paid to a Spark customer reveals the Spark address. @benthecarman has cooked up a utility to doxx the Spark address from any bolt11 invoice paying a Spark customer.

What this means: if you use WoS (or any other wallet using Spark), anyone you give a bolt11 to (which you do when you want to receive money) will be able to view all of your transactions and your account balance.

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0 replies \ @k00b OP 9 Oct

Correction: some wallets using Spark (like Breez) do not expose the Spark address in the bolt11. However, given the public explorer and Spark address reuse, timing analysis can be used to deduce a wallet's Spark address and therefore its balance and history.

200 sats \ 6 replies \ @02d769cb73 8 Oct

are older versions of WOS affected by this in any way, or is it just this new release ?

(i have some stray sats on an older WOS, dunno if i should move them and ditch it )

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Filiprogrammer 9 Oct

The old custodial mode is not affected.

100 sats \ 4 replies \ @optimism 8 Oct

just take them out, pref to some other LN wallet. Isolate the utxo if you're forced to use boltz to swap to on-chain and then either mix it or if it's enough (500k+), use it to open a new lightning channel and go from there.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @nichro 8 Oct

Even funds on WoS in the old custodial mode will be moved to spark? I had the impression that'd be only if you activate self custody mode

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 9 Oct

The question is: why would that stay around? I'd pre-empt in anticipation of the full migration out. I assume that this will take < year, but I may be wrong.

@remindme in 1 year

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @02d769cb73 8 Oct

i should add, i didn't ever sign in or anything to it, it's way less than even 100k sats, and i've only ever used it over LN, never on chain

26 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 8 Oct

If you have another LN wallet, just send it there. Worst case send it to SN and spend it on zaps.

170 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 8 Oct

This is awful, yikes

I tested out blitz wallet which uses spark and I was not impressed

I could never deposit or buy credits on SN using blitz

Edit: I should clarify. I tried to send money from blitz to SN via lightning. After 3 failed attempts I gave up

50 sats \ 2 replies \ @Scoresby 8 Oct

if you use WoS (or any other wallet using Spark)

Meaning that this is not necessarily a WoS design choice, so much as a Spark design choice?

So this would also apply to wallets using Spark via Breez? If so, I'm even more surprised that I hadn't heard about this before.

154 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 8 Oct

source

231 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 8 Oct

33 sats \ 2 replies \ @SpaceHodler 9 Oct

Is it public too if you've only ever used it for LN transactions and no on-chain?

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 9 Oct

This is about the new version of WoS that uses Spark. Did you use this new version?

The issue is that their lightning invoices include routing hints that can be used to reveal your spark balance

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SpaceHodler 9 Oct

I only update my apps manually and don't do it often. My version is 3.1.5.

33 sats \ 6 replies \ @SimpleStacker 8 Oct

I don't understand the technology behind it. Is this a choice or is it an unavoidable feature of the protocol, much like how bitcoin block transactions are public?

147 sats \ 0 replies \ @Scoresby 8 Oct

I was watching @moneyball's talk at bitcoin++ (05:25:04) and he talks about this a little (apparently it only recently became public knowledge).

When I inquired, it's not a technology limitation but actually an intentional policy decision by their NC...uh...I can't steelman the argument. They feel like it's disingenuous to users to not publish it because of the risk of a Spark Operator potentially publishing it

Also, I did a quick scan of @BTCsessions recent WoS tutorial and he doesn't mention this privacy trade-off.

Seems like Spark maybe might have wanted to make this design decision a little more clear to users.

224 sats \ 2 replies \ @justin_shocknet 8 Oct

an unavoidable feature of the protocol,

It's not a protocol, it's a centralized exchange.

The server inherently needs telemetry to operate, this would be exposed by someone else had they not front-run it.

133 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 9 Oct

Does the protocol require to reuse addresses like Breez SDK and Blitz wallet do?

This also seems to be the case for the SDK from Spark itself since I found this in their official developer guide:

Important Notes

The same wallet will always generate the same Spark Address

But not sure if that's a technical limitation of the protocol, or just a limitation of all existing SDKs and wallets.

Maybe this is a question for @benthecarman?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @benthecarman 9 Oct

You kinda have to treat them as separate now but they claimed they'll fix it by EOY

107 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b OP 8 Oct

It's either a choice or an oversight afaict. They are encoding the spark address into the invoice when they could, if they wanted, obscure it.

5 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 8 Oct

Spooks be spookin.

221 sats \ 0 replies \ @justin_shocknet 8 Oct

they've also made the weird choice of making all customer balances and transactions visible via a public explorer

Since it's a fake L2, and not really Lightning, there's inherently a centralized server with telemetry. Can't make any privacy assumptions with this that you wouldn't make with an traditional custodian...

... but this seems even worse since the LARP effect of acting as a Bitcoin layer implies some publicly traversable records in a tree/shadow-chain.

I imagine they only made the explorer to front-run someone else making one.

26 sats \ 0 replies \ @BeeRye 9 Oct

thats pretty dumb, hope they fix it

249 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 8 Oct

Maybe now people will pay more attention to my warnings. I was always warn you about spark, to stay away.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @mega_dreamer 9 Oct

🧡

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @SilentHash 8 Oct

Before I was affiliated with THNDR games and now they have switched to another wallet that is not available in my country. 😭 I miss Wallet of Satoshi when it could be used in THNDR