Most Secure Bitcoin Wallet Armory Raises $600k

[sunnankar]

Could use some Reddit love.

[etotheipi]

If anyone has been anxious awaiting "something big" that was it.  Armory just got a huge injection of money, and we're going to start taking Armory -- and Bitcoin -- to the next level   It's a shame I couldn't get the new version of the software out in time, but oh well.  I'll have it soon!

To allay any concerns about "selling out", I want to reassure you all that the reason I picked Trace as my investor (I had a lot of investors approach me) is because his vision is very well-aligned with Armory's.  He is very insistent that money & revenue is irrelevant for the next 6-12 months.  He wants to see Armory get easier to use, multi-sig implemented, Android app, HW wallets, and a server version that can replace bitcoind.  He believes that Bitcoin needs these things more than he needs short-term return on this investment.  This is very cool, because it means that I can focus on developing cool stuff, instead of figuring out how to make money.  Of course, I will eventually have to spend effort on the revenue side, but the top priority for the next 12 months is getting Armory usability expanded for both new users and power users.

Part of it is that Trace and the other investors have a lot of Bitcoin investments, and are really trying to figure out how to get Bitcoin into great adoption/acceptance.  Funding Armory to do this development benefits them even if Armory fails as a business (but succeeds as an open-source project).    For months, he has been saying that wallet apps are the weakest point of the Bitcoin system, and we need more wallet usability, functionality and security.   I'm very excited that Armory will eventually be able to provide all that.

For now, I have a ton of work to do.  But you guys can sleep easy knowing that I'm officially on this full-time!  Thanks for all your guys' support on this.  Armory's reputation doesn't come from nowhere... it takes a userbase to like it enough to talk about it, share it, promote it, etc.  So thanks everything for helping me get to this point.


In case you're wondering:  the way you guys interact with me and Armory will not really change,  I plan to remain very active on the forums, and will probably even continue code development on github.  What might change is that I'll have a couple new code wizards joining the team, and will probably be on here answering forum posts and responding to emails.  I'm hoping that once these guys are up to speed, we'll really be able to take off.  For reference, we currently have two other employees in addition to me, and we'll probably be getting a third.  But we're still working out some budget stuff and not sure whether I have time to organize that many brains

[Zomdifros]

Congrats Alan, this seems like an excellent move for both Armory and Bitcoin! I'm anxiously looking forward to the new release!

[Rampion]

This is such a good news!

Godspeed Alan, you deserve it!!

[Dabs]

Woot! Go Team Armory!

[01BTC10]

Good news! Improving security and usability for every users is a big step forward in the good direction.

[Dabs]

I nominate Compressed Keys. Hey, you got funding now, it's time to upgrade the wallet to keep up with the times.

[jbreher]

Great news! Thanks to Alan for all the hard work, and thanks to Trace for the pockets!

As far as future dev plans, I'd personally advocate for a working Mac client. I'm kinda selfish that way.

[jingos]

Of course, I will eventually have to spend effort on the revenue side...

Ads I guess, can't wait...

[Roy Badami]

Of course, I will eventually have to spend effort on the revenue side...

Ads I guess, can't wait...

Highly unlikely as long as Armory remains under a free software licence, since anyone else could just build an ad-free version from source.

[niko]

In 6-12 months I hope to start hearing about enterprise-level support and consulting for big players who need security and tweaks and advice from those who built the tool...

[Dabs]

Yes, please do not include ads. Besides, the offline wallet will never connect to the internet, so ads on the offline wallet will never update.

Enterprise support makes sense, like Red Hat and other Linux distros. They have free versions, and the paid versions are the same except for support and maybe some licensed apps.

[jbreher]

Enterprise support makes sense, like Red Hat and other Linux distros.

That would be great. Trying to build Armory on CentOS (RHEL) is currently an adventure through dependency hell.

[etotheipi]

Enterprise support makes sense, like Red Hat and other Linux distros.

Trying to build Armory on CentOS (RHEL) is currently an adventure through dependency hell.

Really?  I specifically made sure that all dependencies are versionless, so it should just be a matter of having the right packages, without any concern for their versions.  The list of needed packages are here:

http://bitcoinarmory.com/download/building-armory-from-source/

If you use your package manager it will make sure those packages and all their dependencies are installed, then the biggest hurdle should be the Makefile finding libpython2.7.a or libpython2.7.so.  I have heard of no issues compiling on any distribution once those are located and the makefile updated appropriately.  

I really don't know much about Makefiles, which is why I haven't fixed it yet.  I have asked for helping making that more robust but so far no one has come to rescue.  For now, you can simply "find . | grep libpython2" from the /usr directory and hardcode any libpython2.X.a or .so in the Makefile that is found.

[jbreher]

Enterprise support makes sense, like Red Hat and other Linux distros.

Trying to build Armory on CentOS (RHEL) is currently an adventure through dependency hell.

Really?  I specifically made sure that all dependencies are versionless, so it should just be a matter of having the right packages, without any concern for their versions.  The list of needed packages are here:

http://bitcoinarmory.com/download/building-armory-from-source/

<edit> I started with that guide. Encountered difficulty anyway. </edit>

I'll try to dig up specifics later today. I'll need to swap HDDs in the machine I configured for the purpose. As I recall, the worst problem was the Qt bindings for Python. Various components were tied to differing versions of this module.

[Dabs]

I know this may be asking too much, but it's possible to recreate all the functionality without external dependencies except maybe a few, like QT.

Of course that would be a full time job.

But, that's what the Armory developer got now. Hehehe.

[etotheipi]

I know this may be asking too much, but it's possible to recreate all the functionality without external dependencies except maybe a few, like QT.

Of course that would be a full time job.

But, that's what the Armory developer got now. Hehehe.

Do you mean static compiling in as much as possible?  Or actually rewriting the app to use less dependencies? 

Static compiling a lot of the dependencies into the app and then "freezing" the python would be a good idea.  One of the reasons I haven't done that, is because I like that the source code ends up being (1) plain text (2) used by the app.  So it's easy for anyone to see that the installed code they are running is the same as what's in the repo.

However, I can really really limit the dependencies by simply using a freeze utility which should bundle everything into a single opaque distributable with its own embedded python interpreter.  My guess is that it pre-compiles the .py files into .pyc so the source code is no longer part of the distribution.  Meh.

[Dabs]

Yes. That would be appreciated. I'm not a production level or enterprise programmer, but I do like my own executables to be small, compact, portable, and as little bloat as possible.

You do whatever it is that everyone in the team can handle, or what the others request. I am just a single end user.

It's good to have it open source, and I just think it's also good that you make a super optimized compiled version (for Windows) since you will probably GPG sign it or publish sha256sums anyways.

For example, take a look at TrueCrypt. It's not totally free or open source, it's almost. The binaries ... well this particular software has it's own debate about it's openness, so that's off-topic.

But you're the lead developer on Armory, so if you publish sha256 or sign the binaries, I'm going to trust the software and appreciate that it runs better than if I tried to compile and build it myself. (unless you're still working on a 32 bit version for Win XP?)

Ok, I have to try it now. hehe.

I just want to use compressed keys with it. And hope it works on my ancient machines. I've got a whole bunch of really old laptops that are perfect for offline usage.

[goatpig]

(unless you're still working on a 32 bit version for Win XP?)

From what I've seen of the project, the current LevelDB reduced ram branch could be pretty functional in 32 bit Windows, including XP