Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet

[dooglus]

So, how do you provide a new address to each person?

I am relatively new to BTC, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. I have tried to search for the answer but haven't found anything that answers this specific query.

As I understand it, there's no way to get Mycelium to generate a new receiving address until the previous one has received funds.

It's not a stupid question, it's a stupid mis-feature of Mycelium. People have asked to have this improved in the past (in this thread I think) but I don't think the developers saw it as a desirable feature. If I'm trying to split a restaurant bill 5 ways I want to be able to give one address to each of the 5 people. I don't want to have to wait for each person to pay before I am allowed to generate the next address. That's just silly.

You can use a site like https://dcpos.github.io/bip39/ to generate as many receiving addresses as you like, but it's kind of inconvenient. The site works offline - you can save it to a memory stick and load it on an offline machine (so you don't have to type your seed words on an online machine).

I'll see if I can find the post I'm thinking about, and will update this message if I do.

Edit: maybe this is what I'm thinking of - it appears adding the ability know more than one unused receiving address at a time is "on their list", and has been for nearly 2 years now:

With the latest version, if I have given someone the displayed receiving address how do I get another address for payments before a transaction has been sent to it?

Currently thats not possible - but its on our list!
There will be an option to show multiple unused receiving addresses eventually.

It shouldn't be a problem to receive more than one payment to that same address, since all your old addresses are monitored for payments. There might also be an issue that, since HD wallet addresses are generated sequentially, the wallet scans each address to see if it's empty, and if it is, assumes that it was the last one used and doesn't scan for any new ones (we scan 2 ahead). So there may be an issue where, for example, you give three people an address to send to, each one having a new address, and the first two people don't send anything. Since those addresses will be empty, the wallet will think that it's the end of the used addresses and that there are no payments to any later addresses, and the third person's payment (or any after it) will not show up. Only way to get around that is to scan ahead for even more addresses, and/or limit the amount of empty addresses you can generate. But as I said, there shouldn't be a problem with two people sending to the same address.
Should we manage to implement stealth address payments, this won't be a problem anyway.

When we implement support to generate more receiving addresses, we will of course adjust the lookahead accordingly. At the moment it's 2 for synchronizing and 20 for discovery (like when importing or activating an archived account).

[HCP]

Yes it is certainly an issue. And one that I stumbled across in my first week of "bitcoining" 

I noticed that in the blockchain.info (beta) wallet... when i go to addresses, they have a "next address" button... you can just click that and it generates the next address for you... it looks like it can generate as many as you want. I made 4 or 5.

I can see their issue with the scanning... you have to have some way of stopping without continuing to infinity... So they'd have to have some way of tracking addresses generated... I wonder if it is possible to have a counter stored? So every time an address is generated, either manually or via receiving a transaction to address in the list position X, where X = counter, it increments the counter.

To be ultra safe, you could scan to counter+5 or counter+10 maybe? Or maybe a manual button to scan another 5 or 10 ahead if a user is not getting transactions/addresses showing up.

This, and the fact that sometimes it seems to sit in my phone memory and not require my PIN number are probably the biggest issues I have with Mycelium at the moment. The PIN one is particularly disturbing. Like just now, I picked up my phone which I haven't touched for a good 2 hours, turned on the screen, swiped away the lock screen, went into the App Drawer, tapped Mycelium and it went straight into my account listing??? 

[trasla]

Yes it is certainly an issue. And one that I stumbled across in my first week of "bitcoining" 

I noticed that in the blockchain.info (beta) wallet... when i go to addresses, they have a "next address" button... you can just click that and it generates the next address for you... it looks like it can generate as many as you want. I made 4 or 5.

I can see their issue with the scanning... you have to have some way of stopping without continuing to infinity... So they'd have to have some way of tracking addresses generated... I wonder if it is possible to have a counter stored? So every time an address is generated, either manually or via receiving a transaction to address in the list position X, where X = counter, it increments the counter.

To be ultra safe, you could scan to counter+5 or counter+10 maybe? Or maybe a manual button to scan another 5 or 10 ahead if a user is not getting transactions/addresses showing up.

This, and the fact that sometimes it seems to sit in my phone memory and not require my PIN number are probably the biggest issues I have with Mycelium at the moment. The PIN one is particularly disturbing. Like just now, I picked up my phone which I haven't touched for a good 2 hours, turned on the screen, swiped away the lock screen, went into the App Drawer, tapped Mycelium and it went straight into my account listing??? 

The scan ahead counter would only work locally, if you import your backup somewhere or have another device use the same seed, the counter would not be known.
But yes, there should be some kind of mechanic to give more receiving addresses.
But to do that right it needs a good UI and then you need to be able to tag stuff somehow etc to not get confused.
And while that has been on the list for long it never got more important than other stuff on that list


As for the lock:
That only works upon app startup. When you navigate out of the app, it is not closed, just moved to background. Depending on your phone model and operation system, it can stay there for a long time. Maybe it only moves out if RAM is getting full or if some battery manager app closes it. Depending on your phone and OS you should be able to either hold the center hardware utton down or tap some "show apps" hardware button or something similar, to see a list of all open applications. Usually you can swipe them away in order to actually terminate them.
After doing that, opening the app again should always require the PIN (if the setting is enabled).

[HCP]

Fingers crossed this address thing makes it to the top of the list soon

As for the lock, is it possible to implement a timeout of some sort, so that if the app is backgrounded for longer than X minutes it "locks" and needs the PIN again?

I know my banks internet banking app has this feature. If the app spends more than a few minutes in the background, when you go back to it, it shows the PIN entry screen again. It isn't instant, so you can switch backwards and forwards from different apps (like to copy a persons name and account number from an email etc if you're making a payment etc), without having to unlock the app every time you switch back to it, but it isn't more than 2-3 minutes before it automatically locks.

I think this would be a great addition to the security features of Mycelium.

[trasla]

Fingers crossed this address thing makes it to the top of the list soon
As for the lock, is it possible to implement a timeout of some sort, so that if the app is backgrounded for longer than X minutes it "locks" and needs the PIN again?

There will not be much development going on for the current app, efforts are focused on the new shiny next generation

And yeah, sure it is possible to do that, but as everything else someone needs to do it.
The assumption is that most people have some kind of screen lock and do not have their phone floating around where others can access it, and if you hand the phone to someone you can just make sure the app was killed before giving it over. So not saying it wouldnt be useful, but doesnt seem super urgent. I am pretty confident if you coded that and made a pull request , it would be merged in.

[HCP]

Ahhhh, I see... I did not realise that the current version was not under active development and we were expecting a shiny new version

Anyway, I had a bit of browse around the Mycelium github (I have some limited Android coding experience from working on a Custom ROM a year or so ago) and it seems like the sort of thing that could be easily integrated. I suspect the true issue will be working it into the Android application lifecycle... A quick google search yielded about 7349867321652146 threads on StackExchange asking how to detect application backgrounding/foregrounding 

It seems like Android doesn't really offer any native solution, that is 'reliable', for determining when your application is going to the background and when it has been pulled up to the foreground. There are the methods like onPause(), onResume(), onStart() and onStop() methods, but they can get called when you switch from one activity to another within your app, show a dialog, in 'unexpected' orders or even when you rotate the device!

Obviously it is possible, because plenty of apps do it, so maybe some investigation into an open source app that has this feature would be worthwhile... after I find the motivation to download the Android SDK and setup a dev environment again 

[steve8143]

Hey everyone...I am having problems with finding my coins/tokens from colu. Can't sign-in. The verify email doesn't work when clicked.
Can anyone please point me in the right direction.
Thanks very much 

What is a colu?  This is a mycelium thread.

that's how i got my tokens at the end of the crowdsale

@steve8143 If you still need help, Colu's email address is admin@colu.co

Thank You!

[steve8143]

Hey everyone...I am having problems with finding my coins/tokens from colu. Can't sign-in. The verify email doesn't work when clicked.
Can anyone please point me in the right direction.
Thanks very much 

What is a colu?  This is a mycelium thread.

that's how i got my tokens at the end of the crowdsale

@steve8143 If you still need help, Colu's email address is admin@colu.co

I am having no luck with that

[dooglus]

There will not be much development going on for the current app, efforts are focused on the new shiny next generation

Some feature requests for the next generation:

1) Allow me access multiple receiving addresses so I can issue more than one invoice at a time

2) Offer some kind of proper wallet encryption feature. A 6 digit code just doesn't cut it. I want something like Bitcoin Core has, so that when my phone is stolen I know it will take the thief a significant amount of time to access my wallet seed. Currently I think all he needs to do is root the phone and my seed is there in plain text. That's a worry.

3) Allow me to use my own local bitcore server instead of a central Mycelium server for blockchain queries and transaction broadcast.

[birr]

to access my wallet seed. Currently I think all he needs to do is root the phone and my seed is there in plain text.

Where in the Android file system does Mycelium stash wallet seeds?

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

There will not be much development going on for the current app, efforts are focused on the new shiny next generation

Some feature requests for the next generation:

1) Allow me access multiple receiving addresses so I can issue more than one invoice at a time

2) Offer some kind of proper wallet encryption feature. A 6 digit code just doesn't cut it. I want something like Bitcoin Core has, so that when my phone is stolen I know it will take the thief a significant amount of time to access my wallet seed. Currently I think all he needs to do is root the phone and my seed is there in plain text. That's a worry.

3) Allow me to use my own local bitcore server instead of a central Mycelium server for blockchain queries and transaction broadcast.

Have you taken a look at the new Breadwallet beta that is available for Android phones running Marshmallow 6.0? The fully encrypted phone and fingerprint verification used by the wallet looks like a pretty secure setup for moderate amounts of bitcoin. Breadwallet connects directly to the bitcoin network and stores secret keys in the phone's hardware encrypted keystore,

[bitkilo]

I received this transaction last night to my Mycelium wallet: https://blockchain.info/tx/a445c853f5c8e492c28339db30a1bea8c6c38fc6ab7a73449511519ef4c3cd05

The transaction is currently showing as having 82 confirmations on the blockchain so i know the coins are in that address but the strange thing is that when i open my wallet it looks like it is still receiving the funds.

In the transactions field on the wallet it is green with "7/15/16 confirmed" showing but on the main page "balance" is still says "receiving 0.01745902BTC"
When i try to send the btc in a new transaction it warns me that i am "spending unconfirmed funds"
I could probably still send the coins and it would probably work but i want to be a little more confident first, anyone know what else i can do?

The wallet is just a hot wallet i use on my phone and try to never keep any btc in it longer than a day.

[HCP]

Did you get this issue resolved or is it still not displaying correctly?

It sounds like there is a bit of sync error somewhere along the line.

If refreshing the balances and transactions within the app doesn't work, then I would make sure you have your master seed (and any imported private keys) safely backed up... and try the following:

- Make sure you have the most up to date version of Mycelium. When was the last time you updated?
- Try backing all the way out of the app (using back button) and then clear it from the "Recent Apps" list to try and force it to restart.
- If that doesn't work, try clearing the app cache (Settings -> Apps -> Mycelium Wallet -> Storage). See if that helps at all.
- If that still doesn't help, try clearing the full app data. This will likely kill everything in the app (hence why you want to make sure you have everything backed up!). You can then just recreate your HD wallet using your backed up master seed (and re-importing any private keys again)
- Failing that, try uninstalling the app completely and then reinstalling. Restore using your backups.

If none of that helps... Then you'll need to file a bug report or something directly with the Mycelium peeps, because then it would seem like something deep in the app is broken.

[bitkilo]

Did you get this issue resolved or is it still not displaying correctly?

It sounds like there is a bit of sync error somewhere along the line.

If refreshing the balances and transactions within the app doesn't work, then I would make sure you have your master seed (and any imported private keys) safely backed up... and try the following:

- Make sure you have the most up to date version of Mycelium. When was the last time you updated?
- Try backing all the way out of the app (using back button) and then clear it from the "Recent Apps" list to try and force it to restart.
- If that doesn't work, try clearing the app cache (Settings -> Apps -> Mycelium Wallet -> Storage). See if that helps at all.
- If that still doesn't help, try clearing the full app data. This will likely kill everything in the app (hence why you want to make sure you have everything backed up!). You can then just recreate your HD wallet using your backed up master seed (and re-importing any private keys again)
- Failing that, try uninstalling the app completely and then reinstalling. Restore using your backups.

If none of that helps... Then you'll need to file a bug report or something directly with the Mycelium peeps, because then it would seem like something deep in the app is broken.

I have the most recent version and update regularly, cleared cache but it didn't make a difference so I made a backup and made sure i have my mnemonic written down then just sent the funds to another wallet, transaction went through fine with no delays.

I am going to transfer another small sum from the same address as last time and then a different one to see if i can replicate the problem again.

I will keep this updated as i go if anymore problems.

[hgmichna]

Did you get this issue resolved or is it still not displaying correctly?

It sounds like there is a bit of sync error somewhere along the line.

If refreshing the balances and transactions within the app doesn't work, then I would make sure you have your master seed (and any imported private keys) safely backed up... and try the following:

- Make sure you have the most up to date version of Mycelium. When was the last time you updated?
- Try backing all the way out of the app (using back button) and then clear it from the "Recent Apps" list to try and force it to restart.
- If that doesn't work, try clearing the app cache (Settings -> Apps -> Mycelium Wallet -> Storage). See if that helps at all.
- If that still doesn't help, try clearing the full app data. This will likely kill everything in the app (hence why you want to make sure you have everything backed up!). You can then just recreate your HD wallet using your backed up master seed (and re-importing any private keys again)
- Failing that, try uninstalling the app completely and then reinstalling. Restore using your backups.

If none of that helps... Then you'll need to file a bug report or something directly with the Mycelium peeps, because then it would seem like something deep in the app is broken.

I think he should file a software problem report straight away, because I am sure that Mycelium was not designed to need such babysitting as its normal way of use.

Let me add that the internet connection of a mobile phone is, by nature, unreliable. If Mycelium could not handle that, it would be deeply defective.

[PremiumCodeX]

So, with Mycelium BTC Wallet and a portable device that can run Android, can I create my own "hardware wallet"? I find it awesome.

[Johnny00]

It seems the transaction fees increased ouse to be able to send for only a two cent fee now it's 14. I am only testing 100k Satoshi. Are they cheaper fees when I send more?

[TookDk]

It seems the transaction fees increased ouse to be able to send for only a two cent fee now it's 14. I am only testing 100k Satoshi. Are they cheaper fees when I send more?

The transaction fee will depend on the size of the transmission in terms of kB.
If you have many small output in your wallet, then will you fee increase.
You can set mycelium for different priorities, high priority calculates a higher fee, but will also get confirmed faster.  

[birr]

- If that doesn't work, try clearing the app cache (Settings -> Apps -> Mycelium Wallet -> Storage). See if that helps at all.
- If that still doesn't help, try clearing the full app data. This will likely kill everything in the app (hence why you want to make sure you have everything backed up!).

It's not called Storage.  It's called Cache.  At least on my devices running pure Android (Nexus 7) and Cyanogen (Oneplus One), it's Cache. Cache is just temporary stuff, and you can delete it without doing any harm.  But you are dealing with money, so even before doing something as simple as deleting the cache, it's good to verify the backup.
If you have to escalate the matter and delete Data, you are gonna erase the whole app.  Which means you need to make sure that your backup is good.  Did you verify the seed when you created the wallet?

[HCP]

- If that doesn't work, try clearing the app cache (Settings -> Apps -> Mycelium Wallet -> Storage). See if that helps at all.
- If that still doesn't help, try clearing the full app data. This will likely kill everything in the app (hence why you want to make sure you have everything backed up!).

It's not called Storage.  It's called Cache.  At least on my devices running pure Android (Nexus 7) and Cyanogen (Oneplus One), it's Cache. Cache is just temporary stuff, and you can delete it without doing any harm.  But you are dealing with money, so even before doing something as simple as deleting the cache, it's good to verify the backup.
If you have to escalate the matter and delete Data, you are gonna erase the whole app.  Which means you need to make sure that your backup is good.  Did you verify the seed when you created the wallet?

Yeah... I probably should have specified that I am on Marshmallow... In 6.0 the Android menu options to follow are Settings -> Apps -> [AppName] -> Storage

Settings -> Apps -> [AppName] gives something like this:


And then tapping on Storage gives this, where you have the "Clear Cache" and "Clear Data" options:


But I totally agree with your sentiments about making sure things are backed up properly... which is why I put it in bold and underlined it in my post...