Are lightweight bitcoin wallets less secure?

xSkyer

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Quote from: margana on September 03, 2017, 04:44:54 AM

Quote from: Juggy777 on May 07, 2017, 08:06:31 AM

It has been explained really well by talkbitcoin and I don't think using a light weight wallet is really that big a issue.

In which thread do you think it is best explained?

Use search function because there are ton of topics that explain it.

Light wallet like Electrum is safe until you know how to keep your private keys secure. If you don't want to spend extra money on hardware wallet then you can encrypt your private keys with f.e. VeraCrypt and store them on external storage. Also you can create a paper wallet, there are many tutorials on youtube. Paper wallets are safe but less convenient and durable.

margana

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Quote from: Juggy777 on May 07, 2017, 08:06:31 AM

It has been explained really well by talkbitcoin and I don't think using a light weight wallet is really that big a issue.

In which thread do you think it is best explained?

Juggy777

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Quote from: talkbitcoin on May 07, 2017, 06:35:16 AM

because an SPV client does not have the whole blockchain. so they can not do the verification on themselves. they need to rely on Full nodes to give them honest answers.

the reason why many use them is because it is easier to use a light wallet which will only take minimum of 30-40 MB of your Hard Disk and nearly no bandwidth compared to running a Full node which will require at least 100 GB (i think 2 GB in prune mode) of your hard disk and requires a lot of your network traffic also.

read more here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security

It has been explained really well by talkbitcoin and I don't think using a light weight wallet is really that big a issue. As I have seen people use it and they have user it for quiet a while without any issue been reported or their coins being lost. However all this users would barely have huge transactions, all are had mid range transactions and so they did not face any issue. You need to make a call depending on your transactions, your hard disk capacity and bandwidth speed. Even if you stick to a light weight one, it should just work fine for you.

panju1

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Quote from: Captimiz on May 07, 2017, 06:24:06 AM

What's the catch, why doesn't everyone use them?

The security is sufficient. But you do have some loss of privacy.
If you are running other applications on the Bitcoin network, then you do need a full node.

peter0425

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Quote from: jtipt on May 07, 2017, 06:41:06 AM

Quote from: Captimiz on May 07, 2017, 06:24:06 AM

What's the catch, why doesn't everyone use them?

As explained by talkbitcoin, these light weight wallets can be a little unsecure but it's not much to worry about if you are a casual bitcoin user abd don't deal in 100 s of bitcoin daily. Running a full node is not possible for everyone, for example me, I can't afford to download the while blockchain it would cost a lot of bandwidth as well as storage. So I think most of the users here use these light weight wallets, and as of now there are many secure wallets available.

I don't think light wallet is less secure. If you know how to somewhat mitigate the risk then I guess you will be Ok using it. I also can't run a full node as well, its not possible and its going to be too slow on my end. That's why I used light wallet only and learn how to take care of it security wise. And I don't have a lot of bitcoin anyway so again, light wallet is the best option for me.

ranochigo

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Quote from: talkbitcoin on May 07, 2017, 06:35:16 AM

because an SPV client does not have the whole blockchain. so they can not do the verification on themselves.

They use the merkle root to verify if the transaction does exist in the blockchain provided. They however, do still trust the nodes to provide them with blocks that follows the protocol rules. They simply assume the longest chain with the highest difficulty being valid. In a sense, they are also more susceptible to sybil attack.

The bandwidth and the synchronization time is way too much for most users, including me. Using a SPV client is more or less still secure if you're an average user. If you would like to have lesser trust in the servers, you can run a node and connect your SPV client to it. You are effectively trusting yourself in this situation.

jtipt

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Quote from: Captimiz on May 07, 2017, 06:24:06 AM

What's the catch, why doesn't everyone use them?

As explained by talkbitcoin, these light weight wallets can be a little unsecure but it's not much to worry about if you are a casual bitcoin user abd don't deal in 100 s of bitcoin daily. Running a full node is not possible for everyone, for example me, I can't afford to download the while blockchain it would cost a lot of bandwidth as well as storage. So I think most of the users here use these light weight wallets, and as of now there are many secure wallets available.

talkbitcoin

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All I know is that I know nothing.

because an SPV client does not have the whole blockchain. so they can not do the verification on themselves. they need to rely on Full nodes to give them honest answers.

the reason why many use them is because it is easier to use a light wallet which will only take minimum of 30-40 MB of your Hard Disk and nearly no bandwidth compared to running a Full node which will require at least 100 GB (i think 2 GB in prune mode) of your hard disk and requires a lot of your network traffic also.

read more here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Thin_Client_Security

Captimiz

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What's the catch, why doesn't everyone use them?

Topic: Are lightweight bitcoin wallets less secure? (Read 520 times)