[INFO - DISCUSSION] Noah - new Bitcoin Ark mobile wallet

[cygan]

this new wallet is a Bitcoin mobile wallet (for iOS and Android) that uses the Bitcoin Ark protocol.
Noah and the Ark protocol make it easy to get started, support lightning network addresses, and much more...
onboarding is as easy as receiving a lightning payment. during onboarding, you receive an Ark vtxo (similar to a utxo, but off-chain) instead of a lightning channel.
your Noah wallet can also be restored using your seed phrase.
since the project is still in the beta phase, small amounts are recommended for testing.

https://beta.noahwallet.io/
https://github.com/smolcars/noah/releases/tag/v0.1.4




satscraper will be providing you with the rest of the new updates/releases (you're just too fast for me, and you never seem to sleep)

[satscraper]

satscraper will be providing you with the rest of the new updates/releases (you're just too fast for me, and you never seem to sleep)

Well, it is my pleasure to do this, provided Noah's features attract users for discussion.

I have checked its release history and concluded that it is an early-stage wallet, which only crossed into mainnet with v0.0.17 ^{on June 6, 2026}, meaning real-money support has existed for barely over a month. Its commit history shows very active and rapid iteration, with multiple releases per week and ongoing bug fixes.

Let's see if this attracts great attention here.

[internetional]

I shared my first impressions of this wallet in another thread:

Yesterday, a new implementation of the Ark protocol called Bark went live on mainnet. You can already try it using the Noah and Arke wallets.

What pleasantly surprised me in both wallets is the ability to unilaterally withdraw your VTXOs back to the Bitcoin base layer. Bark shipped with this feature from day one on mainnet. For comparison, none of the wallets built for Arkade - another Ark implementation that has already been running on mainnet for eight months - offer this functionality yet.

However, more than a month has passed, and my opinion has changed. The unilateral exit feature, which seemed so important to me back then, now feels completely useless. I've run into a problem: my wallet has stopped connecting to the server. Because of this, I can't access my funds. They are stuck in the Ark protocol. This is exactly where that feature should have come in handy, since it was designed to force-transfer Bitcoins to an on-chain address. But without a server connection, it simply doesn't work.


The ironic part is, if you do have a connection to the server, you don't even need this feature: you can just withdraw your funds through the standard cooperative offboarding.

[satscraper]

I shared my first impressions of this wallet in another thread:

Yesterday, a new implementation of the Ark protocol called Bark went live on mainnet. You can already try it using the Noah and Arke wallets.

What pleasantly surprised me in both wallets is the ability to unilaterally withdraw your VTXOs back to the Bitcoin base layer. Bark shipped with this feature from day one on mainnet. For comparison, none of the wallets built for Arkade - another Ark implementation that has already been running on mainnet for eight months - offer this functionality yet.

However, more than a month has passed, and my opinion has changed. The unilateral exit feature, which seemed so important to me back then, now feels completely useless. I've run into a problem: my wallet has stopped connecting to the server. Because of this, I can't access my funds. They are stuck in the Ark protocol. This is exactly where that feature should have come in handy, since it was designed to force-transfer Bitcoins to an on-chain address. But without a server connection, it simply doesn't work.


The ironic part is, if you do have a connection to the server, you don't even need this feature: you can just withdraw your funds through the standard cooperative offboarding.

From your post I got the impression that you tried to withdraw your funds stuck in the Ark protocol but failed to do so because Noah wallet lacked the live server connection. If this is true, then it is a negative point for Noah , a sign that this wallet's implementation of unilateral exit isn't actually unilateral in practice.

My previous post paid attention to the release history of Noah wallet and from this history one may conclude that this is a chicken wallet, so one needs to wait until it matures or... disappears from the scene.

[internetional]

From your post I got the impression that you tried to withdraw your funds stuck in the Ark protocol but failed to do so because Noah wallet lacked the live server connection. If this is true, then it is a negative point for Noah , a sign that this wallet's implementation of unilateral exit isn't actually unilateral in practice.

My previous post paid attention to the release history of Noah wallet and from this history one may conclude that this is a chicken wallet, so one needs to wait until it matures or... disappears from the scene.

The wallet has been under development for at least one year. The first build I know of appeared on July 21, 2025: https://t.me/blixtwallet/481333/481503

As for the unilateral exit - yes, this feature makes no sense when the server is unavailable. However, access to the funds can be restored by importing the seed phrase into another wallet (for example, Alby Hub).

[cygan]

the new 0.1.9 version was released yesterday.
you can see exactly what this release includes at the following link: https://github.com/smolcars/noah/releases/tag/v0.1.9

[internetional]

A few days ago, I received a transfer via Bark into my Noah wallet. The transfer amount was 701 sats, and it was executed using two VTXOs. Both VTXOs were set to expire in a couple of days. When the time came to refresh the VTXOs, Noah failed to refresh one of them. The reason was that it was below the minimum size eligible for a refresh. 



I had a few more of these "dust" VTXOs, and I had to transfer all of them to the Cypher Box wallet because it has a dust VTXO consolidation feature, which Noah lacks. 

So, be careful with Noah! After receiving each transfer, it makes sense to go into the settings and check your current set of VTXOs. It is quite possible that the transfers you receive consist of multiple dust VTXOs, and during the next automatic refresh of expiring VTXOs, this could lead to a loss of funds or a portion of them. 

By the way, Noah states that the minimum refreshable VTXO size is 330 sats, but I doubt this because Noah uses the same Ark provider as other wallets for the Bark protocol, and yet: 
* one of these wallets (Cypher Box) states that VTXOs under 700 sats are not refreshed,
* another wallet (Arké) recently failed to refresh a VTXO of 333 sats, and those funds were lost.

However, Noah had previously successfully refreshed my 333 sat VTXO, so I suspect the threshold size might be dynamic. Though, of course, it could also be that Noah uses some special refresh technology and is capable of refreshing a VTXO of 330 or 333 sats while other wallets cannot.

[Mia Chloe]

onboarding is as easy as receiving a lightning payment. during onboarding, you receive an Ark vtxo (similar to a utxo, but off-chain) instead of a lightning channel.
your Noah wallet can also be restored using your seed phrase.

Well there are so many wallets out there that are already accepting lightning and i think what is actually gonna be interesting is if this particular wallet is actually capable of moving coins on the  lightning network to the regular on chain. i have only seen a few open source wallets that do it that includes cake.

As for the lightning network in general i strongly believe the fact that we constantly get forks and upgrades that improves transaction efficiency and reduce fees actually affects the attention the lightning network is getting.

[cygan]

the new 0.1.15 version was released two days ago, and it includes several fixes and new features.
this following link shows exactly what those are: https://github.com/smolcars/noah/releases/tag/v0.1.15

[Kruw]

I've been doing daily purchased with this wallet for months and I'm very impressed by its UX. I haven't tried to restore a backup or a unilateral exit on chain yet, but the simplicity for both senders and receivers is almost flawless.