Few questions/suggestions about electrum

[RealBitcoin]

1) Does electrum generate the starting addresses deterministically?

2) Can i set the initial seed of the wallet, because i dont know how the internal RNG performs, to make it more secure

3) Can electrum be used to store big amounts of bitcoin, in cold storage, safely? (Due to Armory becoming intolerably big over 100GB now)

4) Is electrum's watchonly wallet with offline private key storage perfectly secure (doesnt leak private key when you transfer signed file)

5) I think electrum should have 3x verify/type your password at the beginning, instead of 2, to make sure you enter it correctly

6) Electrum's fee/kb seems silly, we all know that a fee of 0.0002 is now the convenient, /kb doesnt matter

7) Can you please implement an option so that i can close the Console window, i`m sure 99% of users dont need that

8] When i restore the wallet from seed, is the wallet itself being stored on some server, from where it retrieves it, or its is only an algorithm that remakes the wallet?

9) Is electrum's debian/linux wallet bug-free? Does it work in debian?

10) Can the seed regenerate the wallet entirely as in 100%, without any additional info (i suppose the password is still needed to unlock it after) ?

11) Perhaps after the performance/security updates are reasonable, have you guys thinked about a more user-friendly outlook with nice buttons, and theme, to make this wallet more user friendly.


If you guys answer to my questions, suggestions, then this wallet will become the NR 1. best bitcoin wallet, with all features included!

[Muhammed Zakir]

1) Does electrum generate the starting addresses deterministically?

Yes.

2) Can i set the initial seed of the wallet, because i dont know how the internal RNG performs, to make it more secure

No. Electrum generates seed with enough randomness to protect you.

• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=153990.0
• https://bitcoinspakistan.com/blog/electrum-seed-explained/

3) Can electrum be used to store big amounts of bitcoin, in cold storage, safely? (Due to Armory becoming intolerably big over 100GB now)

Yes.

4) Is electrum's watchonly wallet with offline private key storage perfectly secure (doesnt leak private key when you transfer signed file)

Yes but if your computer is insecure, that is, contains malware, there is a possibility for a theft.

5) I think electrum should have 3x verify/type your password at the beginning, instead of 2, to make sure you enter it correctly

I think 2 times is enough.

6) Electrum's fee/kb seems silly, we all know that a fee of 0.0002 is now the convenient, /kb doesnt matter

You are wrong. "/kb" does matter. If you send a transaction with big size, 0.0002BTC may not be enough. After all, miners choose the transactions and they prefer transactions with higher fees.

7) Can you please implement an option so that i can close the Console window, i`m sure 99% of users dont need that

You are wrong. Console windows are useful.

8] When i restore the wallet from seed, is the wallet itself being stored on some server, from where it retrieves it, or its is only an algorithm that remakes the wallet?[/b][/color]

No. Electrum is an HD wallet. When you create a wallet, an extended public/private pair is generated. You only need to store it.

• https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki
• https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_wallet
• http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/718/what-is-a-deterministic-wallet

9) Is electrum's debian/linux wallet bug-free? Does it work in debian?

I don't know about Debian but linux works well and I guess Debian too.

10) Can the seed regenerate the wallet entirely as in 100%, without any additional info (i suppose the password is still needed to unlock it after) ?

Yes, it will generate same receiving addresses and change addresses.

11) Perhaps after the performance/security updates are reasonable, have you guys thinked about a more user-friendly outlook with nice buttons, and theme, to make this wallet more user friendly.


If you guys answer to my questions, suggestions, then this wallet will become the NR 1. best bitcoin wallet, with all features included!

I don't know how answering your questions make this a "number one" wallet with "all" features.

Btw, you can use nobbc code, if you don't want a bbc code to be parsed. Eg:-

Code:

[nobbc]8) [/nobbc]

[jonald_fyookball]

MZ is mostly correct, except as follows:

Actually you can set the initial seed of the wallet by choosing
to 'restore from seed', but if you do, you must be sure your
seed is a valid electrum seed using the right amount of words
and only words from electrum dictionary.  But doing this
will allow you to use your own offline generated entropy
(from dice, coins, etc)

Also the seed will not generate more than a certain number of
addresses unless you set the gap limit in the console.

[RealBitcoin]

No. Electrum is an HD wallet. When you create a wallet, an extended public/private pair is generated. You only need to store it.


Yes, it will generate same receiving addresses and change addresses.

Ok so basically i dont even need to store the wallet on a USB, if i can just memorize the seed i can restore the wallet anytime right?

But also i need to memorize the passphrase right? Because the seed only generates the encrypted wallet, for me to access the private key i need the passphrase too right?

[RealBitcoin]

MZ is mostly correct, except as follows:

Actually you can set the initial seed of the wallet by choosing
to 'restore from seed', but if you do, you must be sure your
seed is a valid electrum seed using the right amount of words
and only words from electrum dictionary.  But doing this
will allow you to use your own offline generated entropy
(from dice, coins, etc)

Well i read that thread about 128 bit problem, but its obvious that a 16 character random seed (that is the hex format of the random words) is less secure than if i add more words to it.

So even if the words would be like this:   apple, shoe, table , car , telephone  (and this would be the "guaranteed" secure seed)

If i just add other random words like this :   apple, shoe, table , car , telephone,  basketball, rocket, tornado, balloon

It becomes obviously more strong, i just dont understand why the 128 bit is enough ,when obviously the 256 or 512 should be used by now as more and more supercomputers are available to break passwords.

Also the seed will not generate more than a certain number of
addresses unless you set the gap limit in the console.

So if for example i got 20 addresses generated now, if i set that limit to 30 it will instantly generate 30 addresses?

What is the command?

[shorena]

No. Electrum is an HD wallet. When you create a wallet, an extended public/private pair is generated. You only need to store it.


Yes, it will generate same receiving addresses and change addresses.

Ok so basically i dont even need to store the wallet on a USB, if i can just memorize the seed i can restore the wallet anytime right?

correct.

But also i need to memorize the passphrase right?

Nope.

Because the seed only generates the encrypted wallet, for me to access the private key i need the passphrase too right?

Nope, the seeds is the same regardless of password, it restores an unencrypted wallet.

MZ is mostly correct, except as follows:

Actually you can set the initial seed of the wallet by choosing
to 'restore from seed', but if you do, you must be sure your
seed is a valid electrum seed using the right amount of words
and only words from electrum dictionary.  But doing this
will allow you to use your own offline generated entropy
(from dice, coins, etc)

Well i read that thread about 128 bit problem, but its obvious that a 16 character random seed (that is the hex format of the random words) is less secure than if i add more words to it.

So even if the words would be like this:   apple, shoe, table , car , telephone  (and this would be the "guaranteed" secure seed)

If i just add other random words like this :   apple, shoe, table , car , telephone, basketball, rocket, tornado, balloon

It becomes obviously more strong, i just dont understand why the 128 bit is enough ,when obviously the 256 or 512 should be used by now as more and more supercomputers are available to break passwords.

If the algorithm used only offers 2 bits of security because it boils down to 00, 01, 10 or 11 at a certain point during the de/encryption it makes no difference if you use a 4 bit password or an 8 bit password. 128 bit seeds are considered to be enough because bitcoin private keys offer only 128 bit of security. At least thats my understanding. Electrum 2 offers longer seeds though.

Also the seed will not generate more than a certain number of
addresses unless you set the gap limit in the console.

So if for example i got 20 addresses generated now, if i set that limit to 30 it will instantly generate 30 addresses?

What is the command?

If you restore from seed electrum queries a server for the transactions relevant to your wallet. If it turns out that all 20 addresses already have a balance, electrum generates more (I dont know the exact number) and queries again. This is repeated until there is a preset amount of addresses that have never been used in the past. The gap limit this preset amount as well as the number of initial addresses to query for a balance. Electrum will - under the above circumstances - generate more addresses and corresponding keys than 20. There is next to no reason to change the gap limit.

The command is wallet.storage.put('gap_limit',x) for x as the new limit. It requires a restart.

See here -> https://electrum.orain.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_is_the_gap_limit.3F

[jonald_fyookball]

It becomes obviously more strong, i just dont understand why the 128 bit is enough ,when obviously the 256 or 512 should be used by now as more and more supercomputers are available to break passwords.
 

Becuase there's "only" 128 bits of security in 256 bit ECDSA to begin with.
Unspent addresses have 160 bits of security because of the RIPEMD-160
hash.  You will start to see collisions on the order of 2^160.

I'm not familiar with the 2.0 Electrum, but I suspect it is higher
security than 1.0.  

1.0 Added its own version of key stretching via a 100,000 round hash,
effectively raising the security from 128 bits to 140 bits.

Even so, supercomputers cannot brute force 128 bits.  

Lets do the math:

Say you've got a supercomputer than can do 100 Petaflops.
That's 10^17 flops or about 10^15 hashes per second.

Now lets say you have a billon of those supercomputers.
we're up to 10^24 hashes per second.

that's 3.15 * 10^33 hashes per century.

But 2^128 = 3.4 * 10^38.

So you need to let those billion supercomputers
run for about 10,793 centuries.

[Abdussamad]

11) Perhaps after the performance/security updates are reasonable, have you guys thinked about a more user-friendly outlook with nice buttons, and theme, to make this wallet more user friendly.

Sure they have but it's created by volunteers and they are developers not designers. Perhaps if you have UI design skills you can contribute to this open source project? The git repo is at https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/