Sparrow vs Electrum for desktop

[satscraper]

Sparrow is also strongly supportive of privacy,

Yeah, in this regard I very like that Sparrow is automatically and constantly reverses the order of "change transactions" if you make several transactions in the row. This feature is  very important to discomfort  chain-analysis software in their work. Sure, one can do it the same thing in Electrum, but it requires  manual control from user's part.

[elevates]

Sparrow is also strongly supportive of privacy,

Yeah, in this regard I very like that Sparrow is automatically and constantly reverses the order of "change transactions" if you make several transactions in the row. This feature is  very important to discomfort  chain-analysis software in their work. Sure, one can do it the same thing in Electrum, but it requires  manual control from user's part.

I have been using Electrum wallet for sometime now, got accoustomed to it interface and it's benefits. I never thought about privacy in general as I thought it is cannot do anything like coinjoin featured wallets can do. Untill now! Time to play with sparrow wallet as the point you wrote is pretty interesting. I will download the wallet for the first time and most probably use it for a few weeks. Apart from the privacy part if it has an easy to understand & react interface, then I am going to use it permanently.

[Flexystar]

Can you elaborate though? Is it better (and for what reason), to run Electrum Server upon your node, instead of connecting Sparrow to your node?

No, it's no better or worse. In both cases, all your data will come from your own node rather than that of a third party, and so your privacy will be maintained. If you already have an Electrum server set up, then no reason not to use it.

There are actually too many people that used to use Electrum since it was released and haven't switched to any other alternative. That's what made me curious.

If you are already familiar with Electrum and already have a server set up, then I see no reason to change unless you wanted to use Whirlpool.

It seems I will be better using any of the wallet considering my recent break down with the Mycelium wallet for iOS. It was completely troubling to set up that wallet on iOS since it’s missing few pieces which help us import our back up and/or imported addresses. It’s far better I either keep using hardware wallet or simply get new one like electrum and sparrow.

I will see how it goes with the set up on laptop and doesn’t have lengthy process of set up. :-)

The only thing I need to know is how much space these guys will take up? Is it gonna be entire blockchain that will get synchronised taking up entire disk on my lappy?

[logfiles]

The only thing I need to know is how much space these guys will take up? Is it gonna be entire blockchain that will get synchronised taking up entire disk on my lappy?

It's a light wallet

And this is how much it takes up on my machine storage. I guess it also depends on how you set it up



It will scan the blockchain to load your wallet's transaction history, but won't download the entire blockchain like a full Bitcoin client does. There is also an option to set the date of the earliest transactions in your wallet if you don't want to scan the entire blockchain.

[o_e_l_e_o]

It will scan the blockchain to load your wallet's transaction history, but won't download the entire blockchain like a full Bitcoin client does. There is also an option to set the date of the earliest transactions in your wallet if you don't want to scan the entire blockchain.

That's not how it works. If you are not using your own node, then it connects to a third party server and queries it for transaction history of your addresses and wallets. The third party returns the necessary data, but you therefore have zero privacy from that third party.

If you want to use it in a privacy preserving way with your own node or Electrum server, then you will absolutely need your node to download and sync the full blockchain first.

[satscraper]

It will scan the blockchain to load your wallet's transaction history, but won't download the entire blockchain like a full Bitcoin client does. There is also an option to set the date of the earliest transactions in your wallet if you don't want to scan the entire blockchain.

That's not how it works. If you are not using your own node, then it connects to a third party server and queries it for transaction history of your addresses and wallets. The third party returns the necessary data, but you therefore have zero privacy from that third party.

If you want to use it in a privacy preserving way with your own node or Electrum server, then you will absolutely need your node to download and sync the full blockchain first.

You are absolutely right, node must be in fully sync state but I think  @logfiles meant that Sparrow client, when first creating his wallet,  has an option to query node for  transactions of its interest  beginning from certain date rather to initiate the full scan of LevelDB  kept by node. In this respect he is correct.

[Cricktor]

It should be well known that any SPV light client wallet gives you no privacy for your wallet's addresses history. You only have privacy if you connect it to your own Electrum server which itself requires to connect to a full Bitcoin node.
I use both Electrum and Sparrow and have a RaspiBlitz node running a Bitcoin Core node, a Fulcrum Electron server, a LND lightning node and a few gadgets more. My SPV wallets don't need to talk to third party servers.

[cygan]

today also the new version of the sparrow wallet was released. with version 1.7.8 come the following changes:

• taproot message signing (bip322)
• improved qr scan performance
• rename wallet support
• rbf with initial minimum fee set

the complete changelog can be found in the github link below


https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.7.8
https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

[dkbit98]

• taproot message signing (bip322)

I wonder if there are any other wallets that support BIP-322 and Taproot message signing or they plan to do it in near future... but this is certainly a nice update coming for Sparrow wallet.
With big jump in using Taproot addresses more and more people are going to need to sign and verify messages for them, just look at this stats chart:
https://transactionfee.info/charts/transactions-spending-taproot/

[apogio]

Does anybody know what the difference is between connecting Sparrow straight to Bitcoin Core Vs connecting it to Electrum Server?

Is there any significant difference in terms of privacy etc?

[o_e_l_e_o]

Does anybody know what the difference is between connecting Sparrow straight to Bitcoin Core Vs connecting it to Electrum Server?

If you connect directly to Bitcoin Core, Sparrow will create a wallet in Bitcoin Core for the relevant addresses, and then have to perform a full blockchain scan to get the history of those addresses (if there is any). Any time you create or import new addresses or wallets to Sparrow, then again, you'll have to perform a full scan to get any relevant history. This is just how it works for Bitcoin Core itself.

If you connect it to a full Electrum server such as Fulcrum or ElectrumX, then any addresses you add or wallets you import are updated almost instantly, just as they are when you connect your Electrum wallet to a third party server.

Is there any significant difference in terms of privacy etc?

If you are connecting to your own full node, or you own Electrum server which is built upon your own full node, then no, there is no difference. If you start adding third party servers or nodes in to the mix, then it depends on what you are comparing.

[apogio]

If you are connecting to your own full node, or you own Electrum server which is built upon your own full node, then no, there is no difference. If you start adding third party servers or nodes in to the mix, then it depends on what you are comparing.

I am running a full node and electrum server upon it, so there is no difference as you said.

So the reason to connect sparrow to bitcoin core instead of electrum server is the simple fact that you don't have to run an electrum server. It only requires bitcoin core to run. Am I right?

[o_e_l_e_o]

So the reason to connect sparrow to bitcoin core instead of electrum server is the simple fact that you don't have to run an electrum server. It only requires bitcoin core to run. Am I right?

Correct. If you cannot run an Electrum server, or you don't want to, then you can connect Sparrow directly to Core, with the downside that you will need to perform a full rescan for any addresses you import as I explained above.

If you are already running your own Electrum server, then I would preferentially connect to that.

[cygan]

a few hours ago a new version of the sparrow wallet was released. with the 1.7.9 version there are again numerous fixes as well as some new features/upgrades like e.g.

• wallet accounts summary dialog
• keystore labels in descriptor QRs
• rename labelled UTXOs by changing matching related transaction labels
• HWI v2.3.1

the complete changelog can be found in the github link below:


https://sparrowwallet.com/download/
https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.7.9

[Kruw]

It should be well known that any SPV light client wallet gives you no privacy for your wallet's addresses history. You only have privacy if you connect it to your own Electrum server which itself requires to connect to a full Bitcoin node.

You can retain your privacy as a light client by using BIP157/BIP158 block filters instead.  Wasabi Wallet, Blixt, and Breez all use this technology: https://bips.xyz/157 , https://bips.xyz/158

[Cricktor]

...

Interesting and thank you for these details. More stuff to read, digest and hopefully understand. There is one thing with crypto that's for sure: there's always something new to learn and stuff you haven't heard of pops up almost daily or weekly. It dawns me, it's supposed to be that way, isn't it!

[satscraper]

It should be well known that any SPV light client wallet gives you no privacy for your wallet's addresses history. You only have privacy if you connect it to your own Electrum server which itself requires to connect to a full Bitcoin node.

You can retain your privacy as a light client by using BIP157/BIP158 block filters instead.  Wasabi Wallet, Blixt, and Breez all use this technology: https://bips.xyz/157 , https://bips.xyz/158

Unfortunately the list of the light clients which have off-the-shelf wheels to  add relevant Bloom filters are very limited at the current moment, neither Sparrow nor Electrum are in that list. Besides improvements in privacy such filters help in reducing of wallet's loading  time which is not the  last thing especially when working via TOR. Wasabi, indeed, has  turbosynch mode that implements block filters according to  BIP 157&158 but as far as I know they are provided by coordinator which is controversial matter, at least for me.

[Kruw]

Unfortunately the list of the light clients which have off-the-shelf wheels to  add relevant Bloom filters are very limited at the current moment, neither Sparrow nor Electrum are in that list. Besides improvements in privacy such filters help in reducing of wallet's loading  time which is not the  last thing especially when working via TOR. Wasabi, indeed, has  turbosynch mode that implements block filters according to  BIP 157&158 but as far as I know they are provided by coordinator which is controversial matter, at least for me.

Yep, now that the framework for BIP157/BIP158 is in Core, filters served by a coordinator would be better served by the Bitcoin network for availability and reliability.

[cygan]

today the 1.8.0 version of the sparrow wallet was released. among other things, the following features were added:

• transaction diagram captions
• larger and denser qr display
• search all open wallets
• airgapped message signing
• Satochip and Krux support

the download and the complete changelog can be found under the following links:
https://sparrowwallet.com/download/
https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.0

[dkbit98]

Satochip and Krux support

Great to see support for more hardware wallets!
Sparrow is getting more serious with every new release, and in spme ways it is even getting better than Electrum wallet.