Topic: HARDWARE WALLET WITH JUST XPUB (Read 152 times)

As I understand your only problem is how to generate (get information about) your addresses, right?
So let's say you have our seed somewhere and you only need a tool which would covert seed (or generated xpub) into bunch of addresses you would use for incoming transactions.

Of course the best would be to have your own node (+ electrum server). All depends how paranoid you are. Using anything (crypto too) should be easy and give pleasure. On the other hand it is different situation if you must hide your bitcoins and keep strict privacy for 0.01BTC and different if it is 100BTC.

Anyway, because you mentioned bunch of addresses from one seed, I understand that what concerns you is the fact that someone may realize that some addresses (yours) has one owner, right? That's why apart of protecting your seed you want to (separately) protect somehow pub. But why overcomplicate and duplicate problems?

I wouldn't use a phone or Electrum at all. Phones are built to communicate, which is exactly what you are trying to avoid, as well as coming with tons of bloatware and most of the software on them not being open source. Any light wallet will communicate with 3rd party servers.

This is by no means exhaustive, but as a rough idea I would do something along these lines:

• Buy a second computer or laptop in cash
• Format it and install a lightweight open source Linux distro of choice, and install Tor
• Download Bitcoin Core and the blockchain all over Tor
• Use this computer for nothing else, and download a bunch of extra junk data at the same time to obfuscate the size of your download
• Buy bitcoin for cash and have it sent to your Bitcoin Core wallet
• Never look up your address or your balance anywhere else or on any other device other than via Bitcoin Core on this computer

However, I would suggest there are other far more likely ways for you to compromise your privacy which you should also think about. If you bought a hardware wallet, did you give out your name and shipping address to the hardware wallet manufacturer? When you bought bitcoins without KYC, did you still leak your name via a bank transfer, PayPal account, etc? At some point you will want to spend or sell these bitcoin. How are you going to do that?

Actually some of the Electrum servers also leak information about the addresses in a wallet and their transactions/funds. All the SPV wallets (light wallets that connect to external servers) face, in a way or another, this same problem.

If you want proper privacy, I think that the actual way is a bit more complicated, involving you install Bitcoin Core and download the full blockchain.

I think that in order to import a master public key you may also have to install an Electrum server and use Electrum with your own server. I've done that a few months ago.

Thank you for the the answers, I wasn’t expecting so much help.

As all of you know, sharing your public master key does not risk your coins, but it does compromise your privacy. I am trying to get to the highest level of paranoia. Let’s imagine the government is surveiling us, they go full BTC ban and track us down. If you connect through trezor/ledger suit app, you are using their server (leak in your privacy), thus you should use your own node with Tor, however they can track your node too if you are not skillful to cover the ip of it.

Therefore, if you want to go full stalked mode, the best way would be to buy coins with no KYC, never check the balance in your phone as it is linked to an identity, never import the master key in your wallet.

The only way, I imagined to have 0 leaks is to buy a phone, import electrum, then import the XPUB and generate wallets to receive coins. Then check the balance through Tor with wifi in a cafeteria for example. That is why I was asking if there is device to just generate wallets.

Thanks

Your sincerely another commoner pleb.

As explained above, there are no hardware wallets which support watch-only wallets since it defeats the purpose of a hardware wallet.

If you want to be able to carry around your addresses without them ever touching the internet, then your options are to either write them down on paper, or carry a second permanently airgapped device (phone, table, laptop) which has a watch only wallet on it. This won't be a true watch only wallet though, since it will never show you your balances since it will never connect to the an internet connection. It will just be a list of your addresses.

I don't understand what's the point of importing anything like that to hardware.
Hardware wallets are not directly connected to the internet, and you can have watch-like address when device is disconnected from computer.
When device is not connected with computer you can't spend coins, but you can monitor balance if you want at least for Trezor Suite, or with Electrum wallet.
I didn't test all hardware wallets myself, but I guess most airgapped hardware wallets like Keystone, Passport, SeedSigner, etc would be the best option.

As far as I know, there are no watch-only hardware wallets exist and you are probably the first one who asked this question. Moreover, for a watch-only wallet to be considered so and to properly function, that is, it needs to somehow show a balance on the addresses that were generated from your xpub, it does need an internet connection. If you don't want to expose your xpub then you can install any software wallet on an air-gapped computer or laptop that has never touched the Internet, but you still won't be able to check balance.

If you import the seed phrase or private key on online wallet, there could be an online attack that can reveal your seed phrase and keys to online attackers, this can be used to steal your coins. This is common on custodial exchanges as they have some of their coins on hot/online wallets.

To be safer, in a way your seed phrase or private key not to be revealed online, you can get yourself a reputed hardware wallet like open source ones, like Trezor. But still very good to avoid malware which can result to online attacks, and completely avoid clipboard malware.

Master public key or address importation will result to creation of watch-only wallet, the private key needed to sign a transaction is not imported, but only master public key or address(es) are imported. This makes watch-only wallet to be a wallet that is used only for tracking transactions, not used for making transactions.

There is nothing wrong to have a watch-only wallet on your online device and use it for tracking transactions. Although you can have watch-only wallet on some hardware wallet, but it does not add to the security and safety of your wallet if comparing having it on online device to having it on hardware wallet.

What most important to secure your coins more is to have your seed phrase generated offline and not connected online, but this is about watch-only wallet in which seed phrase or private key are not imported.

The point of having HW is to safely sign transactions. If you don't want to sign transactions, you don't need the HW. As you know, HW works with a companion software wallet after all.
You can import the master public key into any software wallet... As long as master public key is imported, the wallet doesn't have to be connected to the internet (just then you will see addresses, but not the current funds on those addresses).

I feel that you misunderstood something from how Bitcoin works....

Not sure I understood you correctly here but...

You can always get the xPUB from your Trezor device[1], wipe the device since you don't want to keep the private keys anywhere, and then import the xpub to your Electrum wallet[2]. The whole process can be done offline.

Or do you want to do the whole thing to be done with the hardware device? If so, then AFAIK, no such a wallet exists.

[1] https://wiki.trezor.io/Suite_manual:Displaying_account_public_key_(XPUB)
[2] https://bitcoinelectrum.com/creating-a-watch-only-wallet/

Hello dear plebs:

I am a pleb looking for help.

I am trying to find out if there is a HW with the option to import just the master public key to generate addresses (Only watch-wallet). I know it is possible with Bluewallet to import the public master key, but I do not want to even want to connect to internet with the phone, neither I want to have my master public key in my phone or export the skeleton to electrum in my pc.

I am looking for HW with just the public key, (without the private key inside) to generate addresses to receive, never spend, HODL For4.

Thanks

Yours sincerely anonymous pleb-