Finance:Electrum Bitcoin Wallet
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Original author(s) | Electrum Technologies GmbH |
---|---|
Initial release | 2011 |
Repository | github |
Written in | Python |
Operating system | Linux, Windows, macOS, Android |
Type | Cryptocurrency wallet |
License | MIT License |
Website | electrum |
Electrum is a free custodial cryptocurrency wallet for Bitcoin and Lightning Network. It's available for Windows, Linux (pre-installed on Tails OS), macOS and Android. Electrum is written in Python and uses the Qt widget toolkit for the user interface. Electrum is a lightweight client: it does not download the entire blockchain and instead uses simplified payment verification. Transactions are sent to public servers.[1] It was first released in 2011 and continuously improving.[2][3]
Features
- Encrypted wallet: the file that contains bitcoin private keys is protected with a password, and never leaves the user's computer.
- Deterministic key generation: If you lose your wallet file, you can recover it from its seed (12 words, BIP39). This protects a user from own mistakes.
- Instant on: by default the client does not download the blockchain, but synchronizes that wallet information from a server. This saves a lot of time and storage space.
- Transactions are signed locally: the private keys aren't shared with the server. A user don't have to trust the server with own money.
- Cold storage: Keeping private keys offline is supported. Has a watch-only mode for online use.
- Multi-signature: Dividing the power to spend coins between multiple wallets is supported.
- Hardware wallet integration: Many leading hardware wallets can interface with Electrum, including Coldcard, Trezor and Ledger.
- Redundancy: A users are not tied to a particular server, and the server does not need to know them. One server going down doesn't cause user downtimes.
- No single point of failure: The server code is open source, anyone can run a server. Private keys can be exported and imported into other wallets.
- Firewall friendly: The client does not need to open a port, it simply polls the server for updates.
- Free software: MIT License. Anyone can audit the code.
- Written in Python. The code is short, and easy to review.
- SegWit support: Electrum not only supports Legacy Bitcoin addresses, but also SegWit and its variations.
- Add-ons: third-party plugins are supported, e.g. Two Factor Authentication and Virtual Keyboard.
- Support for Bitcoin URIs, signed URIs and Bitcoin aliases
Screenshot of main window
A transaction overview in the Electrum Bitcoin Wallet
Electrum for other cryptocurrencies
The Electrum supports only Bitcoin and has never supported any altcoins. However Electrum is free software with a permissive license, and there are many forks of the software that support specific altcoins. These are separate projects, with their own maintainers, independent of Electrum.[4]
Few cryptocurrencies have an officially modified versions of the Electrum:
- Namecoin, the fork of Bitcoin for decentralized DNS, has Electrum-NMC as an official wallet.
- Electrum-LTC for Litecoin
- Electrum-GRS for Groestlcoin
- Electron Cash for Bitcoin Cash
Similarly a lot of phishing scammers creating own malicious Electrum wallets that steels money.[5] That's why it's very important to get a wallet only from a trusted source.
Security
Although wallet files are encrypted with PBKDF2, private keys are encrypted with AES256 with the user's password. This could allow an attacker with access to the encrypted data to decrypt the private keys using a dictionary attack or a brute force attack.[6]
Electrumx
Electrumx[7] is a full-node and provides the decentralized Electrum server to the users of the Electrum light wallets. It also is used for NameCoin. ElectrumX is able to serve thousands of clients at once, it is suited to be an always-on server that contributes to bitcoin
Electrum Personal Server
In contrast to Electrumx, the Electrum Personal Server[8] is only aimed at using by a user. Instead of storing the whole Blockchain, it only pursues its own transactions.[9] This allows it to be much more efficient with resources, it does not need any extra data files and is compatible with Bitcoin Core's pruning feature. Electrum Personal Server is the best way to combine Electrum's feature-richness (hardware wallet integration, multi-signature, seed phrase, etc) with a full node's strong security and privacy.
References
- ↑ Zhang, Yiyin (May 2023). "SoK: Anonymity of Lightweight Clients in Cryptocurrency Systems". 2023 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC). pp. 1–18. doi:10.1109/ICBC56567.2023.10174913. ISBN 979-8-3503-1019-1. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10174913.
- ↑ Conrad, Barski (2014). Bitcoin for the Befuddled. No Starch Press. pp. 14. ISBN 978-1-59327-573-0.
- ↑ Caetano, Richard (2015). Learning Bitcoin. Packt Publishing. pp. 70. ISBN 978-1-78528-730-5.
- ↑ FAQ: Does Electrum support altcoins?, https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html#does-electrum-support-altcoins-cryptocurrencies
- ↑ Как обмануть обманщика? "Лаборатория Касперского" разоблачает аферу с Electrum-XMR, https://www.securitylab.ru/news/550692.php
- ↑ Holmes, Arran; Buchanan, William J. (2023-03-01). "A framework for live host-based Bitcoin wallet forensics and triage". Forensic Science International: Digital Investigation 44: 301486. doi:10.1016/j.fsidi.2022.301486. ISSN 2666-2817. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666281722001676.
- ↑ https://github.com/spesmilo/electrumx
- ↑ https://github.com/chris-belcher/electrum-personal-serve
- ↑ "The Electrum Personal Server Will Give Users the Full Node Security They Need". Bitcoin Magazine. 2018-02-12. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/electrum-personal-server-will-give-users-full-node-security-they-need.
External links
- Official website
- Unofficial guides for Electrum
- Electrum in BitCoin Wiki
- Overview of Electrum on the bitcoin.org
- Overview of Electrum on the wallets.com
- Electrum for Android on F-Droid store
- Video Mental Outlaw: Best Bitcoin Wallets and Why You Should Use Them
![]() | Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrum Bitcoin Wallet.
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