Do you think the companion apps for hardware wallets are sufficient?
2199 sats \ 17 comments \ @rustaceanrob 17 Oct 2023 bitcoin
Hi folks,
I'm a programmer that was lucky enough to find the Bitcoin Standard, Mastering Bitcoin, etc. before I was very invested in my career. I am deciding on my next project and would appreciate community feedback...
I use Sparrow wallet with Bitcoin Core. Sparrow is a robust and truly great app, but I can't help thinking that it could be easier to stack sats with a hardware wallet. My current setup is buying Bitcoin on Strike and moving the UTXOs to Sparrow, feels a little hacky to me. I know that Specter has a Swan integration but I didn't pass the KYC test with Swan for some reason lol.
Another feature that could be cool is an intuitive LN integration that would make moving UTXOs from cold storage into a LN channel with Phoenix or whatever app the user choses to make LN payments.
Appreciate any feedback on if this idea might be worth pursuing further. My work so far may be found at https://github.com/rustaceanrob/flow, but I plan to refactor my backend from rust-bitcoin to bdk.
I am happy with current software10.0%
There is room for improvement90.0%
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488 sats \ 1 reply \ @nerd2ninja 17 Oct 2023
Yeah it feels hacky because its money and if you try to obfuscate the technical reality of what's going on the user is going to freak out that they lost their money over something that can actually be solved.
On the sane end of the spectrum, I submitted this issue with padawan wallet on how it could be more hand holdy (since its purpose is to introduce new users to using Bitcoin for the first time). https://github.com/thunderbiscuit/padawan-wallet/issues/325
Your design doesn't look bad per se though. Would prefer not to name a specific product in the software and be sort of product agnostic in design (this is what specs are for)
I bias towards more complexity rather than less though. The less complex designs are already out there and working in my view afterall
(A more complex wallet https://wizardsardine.com/liana/)
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306 sats \ 0 replies \ @rustaceanrob OP 17 Oct 2023
yeah agreed that I might be trying to fit a square peg in a round hole here. The existing options are undoubtedly sufficient and I'm not sure my product would end up doing anything that theirs already can't.
I was wondering who wizardsardine was looking at my rust dependancies... I am already using so much of their code for integration I should probably just contribute to them haha. Thanks for this reference.
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100 sats \ 6 replies \ @025738dda8 17 Oct 2023
I am missing a simple BTC wallet with Trezor support, Taproot, custom electrum server configuration, Tor and some BTCUSD rate visualization for Android. LN would be a good bonus.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @sime 18 Oct 2023
Trezor Suite works on Chrome for Android.
The visualisation is not that great, I would then consider the read only Trezor Suite Lite app for that.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @sime 18 Oct 2023
Ah, but it doesn't tick your Tor requirent.
Next closest thing is Green by Blockstream but they don't have Taproot yet.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @rustaceanrob OP 17 Oct 2023
To my knowledge of Trezor products there is no easy way to export the xpub of the Trezor wallet except to plug it into some desktop, extract the information as file, and use that file in a configuration on a mobile device. I would recommend checking out Blue Wallet if you haven't had a chance yet. There should be some way for you to receive sats, check your balance in fiat, and configure your electrum server (with Tor). Falls short of Taproot spend paths.
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5 sats \ 0 replies \ @sime 18 Oct 2023
Getting the xpub from Trezor Suite is pretty straight forward.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @025738dda8 20 Oct 2023
Checking sats via xpub is not a problem. Yes, I know BlueWallet. There is the Trezor Suite Mobile, but it only supports watching your funds by putting xpub there, and there is no Tor at the moment.
What I am missing is an android wallet app that can spend sats by using Trezor (see my original comment). I want to avoid using laptop and make onchain payments just with a smartphone.
...i know about trezor suite web application. But my demand is to have a native android app.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @rustaceanrob OP 20 Oct 2023
This is a limitation of Trezor products, not mobile wallet devs. Trezor doesn't use Bluetooth to transmit and receive data (transaction binaries in your case). If you can afford it, Blockstream's Green is able to sign transactions via Bluetooth. You can get fully set up with only the hardware wallet and your phone.
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @fiatdenier 17 Oct 2023
Get a hardware wallet and export the xpub to sparrow. Safe and easy
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @rustaceanrob OP 17 Oct 2023
Yes this is the most frictionless option I have experienced
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @Tjacten 17 Oct 2023
Yeah I want to try this out too!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @rustaceanrob OP 17 Oct 2023
Will make a follow-up post if I have the time to make a beta!
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100 sats \ 3 replies \ @spraveenitpro 17 Oct 2023
This is great stuff, I will test this.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @rustaceanrob OP 17 Oct 2023
Sweet! Please be aware that, at the moment, your traffic is not routed through Tor. I think it might be best to wait until I have a Bitcoin Core RPC backend in place for the most technical users..
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @spraveenitpro 18 Oct 2023
Great! I am a react dev and would like to build something like this, may be just follow your steps? what do you think I can do to get started with a scaffold? thanks
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @rustaceanrob OP 18 Oct 2023
Yes feel free to copy anything from the repo. Keep in mind all Bitcoin logic is programmed in Rust. If you need to use Typescript/Javascript for your project, try Electron JS for desktop apps. Any bitcoin related stuff (namely ECDSA) requires a node backend to program with JS. Electron runs a node thread to interact with the machine. The UI can be React-based
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