The bitcoin wallet landscape continues to grow every quarter. As more providers start offering bitcoin wallet services, consumers will have more options to choose from. Samourai Wallet is a solution that piques everyone’s interest, as it offers quite a few different features. Even though the project is still in the alpha stage after over a year of development, Samourai Wallet is well worth looking into.
An Overview Of Samourai Wallet
It is evident the Samourai Wallet team is focusing doing a few things well. Security and privacy are the two main priorities for the developers, even though they still make their wallet solution easy to use. Finding that balance between security, privacy, and convenience is not easy, but Samourai Wallet checks the right boxes with their alpha client.
Having your bitcoin wallet encrypted with AES-256 encryption is a good start. Considering how criminals often target mobile devices to steal information and money, keeping bitcoin funds safe is of the utmost importance. The wallet also enforces a BIP 39 passphrase when the user created a wallet, ensuring no information regarding this process can fall into the wrong hands. Samourai Wallet also supports multi-account Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets through the BIP44 integration.
Putting the user in full control over their private keys is another great feature provided by Samourai Wallet. All private keys are created and stored on the device itself and will never be communicated with the servers or users. Even the developers don’t know the private key of wallet addresses generated through their application. Last but not least, users can set up a 5-8 digit PIN to access the wallet. Every PIN screen is randomized to combat screen recording spyware.
On the privacy front, things are heading in the right direction. Samourai Wallet ensures there is no address reuse, and it randomizes the number of change outputs for every individual transaction. Moreover, the wallet position inputs and outputs of every transaction in a deterministic fashion, which reduces the success chance of blockchain analysis. More importantly, Samourai Wallet offers support for Tor and VPN connections, which allows users to retain a certain level of anonymity while using this wallet. The option to enable blockchain obfuscation to make transactions untraceable is a very nice feature as well.
As one would expect, the Samourai Wallet has some extra features as well. The wallet monitors the condition of the bitcoin network, which can be extremely useful to determine whether or not network congestion can become a problem. The “smart fee” function will be of great help in this regard as well. There is also an instant currency conversion feature, although that can be found in most bitcoin wallet solutions these days.
In the end, the Samourai Wallet is quite a powerful mobile solution for bitcoin holders. It offers security and privacy features, yet it does not swarm novice users with features they do not need or want. The wallet is rather easy to use, although it is important to keep in mind Samourai Wallet is still in the alpha stage of development. Its Android branch of development can be found on GitHub, as that is the only platform the wallet is available for right now. It will be interesting to see how this wallet evolves in the coming months, but for now, it is well worth giving a try.
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