Searching alternative client...

[SebastianJu]

Hello,

im searching an alternative client that has the following settings:

* Way faster synchronizing than the original client. It takes hours to update when you didnt have the wallet open some days. I really dont like that. I now have the client open for hours and it still hasnt loaded 6 days of blocks. I hadnt open the client 12 days. And the blockchain is really big as a file. But for that there isnt an alternative right?
* Portable
* Opensource so that no hidden code is inside
* encryptable for security
* I want to see exactly how much money is on each ADDRESS (not wallet) i own. So that i can prevent to send 20BTC and in fact 3 transactions are made because the 20BTC are stored on 3 addresses. I want to see the addresses and the money on it so that i can send it from the addresses.
* And a client that needs the original wallet opened at the same time doesnt sound useful to me too. I mean then i could use the original one instead.

Is there such a client that contains all points?

Thanks!
Sebastian

[flower1024]

Hello,

im searching an alternative client that has the following settings:

* Way faster synchronizing than the original client. It takes hours to update when you didnt have the wallet open some days. I really dont like that. I now have the client open for hours and it still hasnt loaded 6 days of blocks. I hadnt open the client 12 days. And the blockchain is really big as a file. But for that there isnt an alternative right?
* Portable
* Opensource so that no hidden code is inside
* encryptable for security
* I want to see exactly how much money is on each ADDRESS (not wallet) i own. So that i can prevent to send 20BTC and in fact 3 transactions are made because the 20BTC are stored on 3 addresses. I want to see the addresses and the money on it so that i can send it from the addresses.
* And a client that needs the original wallet opened at the same time doesnt sound useful to me too. I mean then i could use the original one instead.

Is there such a client that contains all points?

Thanks!
Sebastian

i would use blockchain.info's online wallet. it has an option to sync with a normal bitcoind.

to circumvent the initial downloadphase for bitcoin-qt its possible to download the files manually.

if you really want to have a desktop app:
i am not aware of an offline client which uses the wallet.dat from bitcoin-qt. but i think armory is nice.

[jim618]

Hi Sebastian,

Here is MultiBit's scorecard for your points:


Hello,

im searching an alternative client that has the following settings:

* Way faster synchronizing than the original client. It takes hours to update when you didnt have the wallet open some days. I really dont like that. I now have the client open for hours and it still hasnt loaded 6 days of blocks. I hadnt open the client 12 days. And the blockchain is really big as a file. But for that there isnt an alternative right?
Your initial sync is under a minute. Then (on wifi) it is a couple of minutes to sync a week of blocks.
* Portable
Yes - see http://multibit.org/help_runFromUSBDrive.html
* Opensource so that no hidden code is inside
Yes - source code is at : git://github.com/jim618/multibit.git
* encryptable for security
There is a beta version with encrypted wallets  - it will probably be a couple of weeks before that is put on the main website - there is a bit more test and QA to do yet.
* I want to see exactly how much money is on each ADDRESS (not wallet) i own. So that i can prevent to send 20BTC and in fact 3 transactions are made because the 20BTC are stored on 3 addresses. I want to see the addresses and the money on it so that i can send it from the addresses.
Not at the moment, but it is on my TO DO list.
* And a client that needs the original wallet opened at the same time doesnt sound useful to me too. I mean then i could use the original one instead.
You do not need the Satoshi client installed

Is there such a client that contains all points?

Thanks!
Sebastian

[vuce]

multibit or electrum, both are excellent.

[SebastianJu]

I already have checked armory but it seems its not fully portable and is only an addon for the normal client. So that the normal client has to be used anyway.

Online wallets are too insecure for me. I mean why taking the risk to give another person all your bitcoins only for letting them lay there? That sounds too risky, especially in the bitcoinworld.

Downloading manually might be possible but it takes work and probably some time for downloading too. On top you need to trust the source. But maybe there is a client that does this automatically and in a secure way? So that its faster and secure?

Multibits points sound all nice. I think i will give the beta a try so that i can encrypt the wallet. And ill wait for the feature with the single addresses. Because then its a bit more anonymous because addresses cant be connected together so easily.

Thanks!
Sebastian

[jim618]

Hi Sebastian,

If you want to keep your addresses separate (for privacy reasons) you can have separate wallets. With MultiBit you can have as many wallets as your like. You can have only one address per wallet and as long as you are careful not to link them with transactions they will be completely separate.

At the moment I advise people to keep onto small amounts of bitcoin in the beta with encrypted wallets (just to be on the safe side whilst it is still being QAed and tested).

Jim

[JompinDox]

Hello,

im searching an alternative client that has the following settings:

* Way faster synchronizing than the original client. It takes hours to update when you didnt have the wallet open some days. I really dont like that. I now have the client open for hours and it still hasnt loaded 6 days of blocks. I hadnt open the client 12 days. And the blockchain is really big as a file. But for that there isnt an alternative right?
* Portable
* Opensource so that no hidden code is inside
* encryptable for security
* I want to see exactly how much money is on each ADDRESS (not wallet) i own. So that i can prevent to send 20BTC and in fact 3 transactions are made because the 20BTC are stored on 3 addresses. I want to see the addresses and the money on it so that i can send it from the addresses.
* And a client that needs the original wallet opened at the same time doesnt sound useful to me too. I mean then i could use the original one instead.

Is there such a client that contains all points?

Thanks!
Sebastian

Seems like you're describing Electrum exactly
Also this chart can help you compare the major clients.

[Mike Hearn]

If you want to implement very specific privacy policies like the ones you describe you'd need to do some work on bitcoinj (for multibit). It involves some refactoring and other things that would take time. But eventually I'd like to offer a selection of different coin selection policies.

[picobit]

Online wallets are too insecure for me. I mean why taking the risk to give another person all your bitcoins only for letting them lay there? That sounds too risky, especially in the bitcoinworld.

blockchain.info never gets access to your private keys.  They are stored on their server encrypted, but the encryption/decryption occurs in your browser, so they cannot steal your coins.

[wabber]

Use Electrum and use the expert view.
It's a lightweight client which means you use the blockchain of a server but you still keep the private keys for your adresses on your PC and only on your PC. That means you don't have to download the blockchain before you can use your bitcoins.

Expert view enables you to see how much BTCs are on which address and you can freeze any address to force the client to use the bitcoins of another address which is what you want I think.

[SebastianJu]

Looks like electrum sounds interesting too... i think i will test both and check what works best.

@jim618 Till now i didnt thought about that. Wallets with one address could be a workaround and deliver what i want... thats right.

[SebastianJu]

I now have loaded the Beta of Multibit. Its portable from the start, thats good. And the loading of the blocks is very fast. Way faster then in the normal network. But the blockchain is way smaller than the original.
So why is it smaller? Is it encrypted or only the last blocks are hold? And it seems the blocks arent loaded normal. Are the blocks loaded from a server and would this hold a securityrisk? I mean when someone would modify this blockchain i load from the server then my wallet would believe it isnt it?

So how secure is this?

Then i loaded the portable version of electrum. Why is it named stealth?
I started it and wanted to create a wallet. But then it asked me to choose a server. So does this mean the blockchain isnt downloaded but instead a chain from a server will be used? Doesnt this have the same risks like multibit in it?
Or is the wallet stored at the server too? I mean then i would need to trust the coder that my wallet is safe there.

Am i too cautious here?

[jim618]

I now have loaded the Beta of Multibit. Its portable from the start, thats good. And the loading of the blocks is very fast. Way faster then in the normal network. But the blockchain is way smaller than the original.
So why is it smaller? Is it encrypted or only the last blocks are hold? And it seems the blocks arent loaded normal. Are the blocks loaded from a server and would this hold a securityrisk? I mean when someone would modify this blockchain i load from the server then my wallet would believe it isnt it?

So how secure is this?

For MultiBit the blockchain that is stored to disk only contains the headers of the blocks rather than the full blocks. These are 100 bytes each so the 200,000 blocks are 20,000,000 bytes. I include a copy in the installer which is one of the reasons it can start up more quickly. The main difference is that MultiBit does not store all the transactions, only the ones relevant to you.

(If you did not trust this file - called multibit.blockchain in your install directory - you can delete it and it will download all the blocks again from the genesis block. Takes a couple of hours on wifi).

The only servers MultiBit connects to are the generic Satoshi servers of the bitcoin network (i.e. bitcoind servers). It connects to 4 of these to compare the transactions it receives. When you receive a transaction if you do a right click and 'View transaction details' it will say something like 'Seen by 4 peers' to give an indication of how far through the network a transaction is propagated.

It verifies the integrity of a block (the hash, nonce, difficulty etc) but does not keep track of all the bitcoin network transactions. If you were surrounded by hostile nodes and your network was controlled they could fool you by providing you with incorrect blocks and transactions yes.

This is the Simplified Payment Verification model described in the original Satoshi whitepaper.

[stepkrav]

electrum seems cool but misses a feature i want : socks proxy support.

[SebastianJu]

Ok, then it loads the normal original blockchain but only stores some of the data. I think thats good and secure. I always wondered where this will go with bitcoin. I mean the blockchain will grow really big in the future. And everyone has to store it when he has a wallet. But this sounds like a good solution here.

@stepkrav... why not using VPN?

[flatfly]

electrum seems cool but misses a feature i want : socks proxy support.

You're in luck, this feature has just been added (check the main Electrum thread)! It is still under testing though, but if you're comfortable enough with github and feel adventurous, you could try it out. 

[flatfly]

I now have loaded the Beta of Multibit. Its portable from the start, thats good. And the loading of the blocks is very fast. Way faster then in the normal network. But the blockchain is way smaller than the original.
So why is it smaller? Is it encrypted or only the last blocks are hold? And it seems the blocks arent loaded normal. Are the blocks loaded from a server and would this hold a securityrisk? I mean when someone would modify this blockchain i load from the server then my wallet would believe it isnt it?

So how secure is this?

Then i loaded the portable version of electrum. Why is it named stealth?
I started it and wanted to create a wallet. But then it asked me to choose a server. So does this mean the blockchain isnt downloaded but instead a chain from a server will be used? Doesnt this have the same risks like multibit in it?
Or is the wallet stored at the server too? I mean then i would need to trust the coder that my wallet is safe there.

Am i too cautious here?

What "stealth" means in this context is defined here: www.portablefreeware.com/faq.php

Your wallet is never stored on a server.  Electrum servers run full bitcoind nodes to serve the blockchain. In theory the worst that a malicious server can do is lie to you about your balance or a transaction, but it can never steal any coins as it doesn't have your private keys.

[stepkrav]

electrum seems cool but misses a feature i want : socks proxy support.

You're in luck, this feature has just been added (check the main Electrum thread)! It is still under testing though, but if you're comfortable enough with github and feel adventurous, you could try it out. 

oh that's great. Thanks flatfly, i'll give it a try.  Keep up the good work.

[SebastianJu]

Thanks for the info...

[SebastianJu]

I now tested both a bit and i think il use Multibit. I checked out electrum too but this list of words that should lead to getting back your wallet after losing it sounds too risky for me. The number of words seems relatively limited and i think the more wallets are created with this the higher the probability that an attack will get results. I mean an attacker only would need to find all words by creating some addresses and then create a script for chosing them randomly. It looks a bit risky for me.

I like the look of multibit a bit more too so i think i will use it now.

Thanks for the help!