Topic: Mycelium Bitcoin Wallet - page 115. (Read 586429 times)

"Auto Pay" feature:
Contrary to what some of you may think we do have users who use the wallet for very large sums. In many ways it is a lot easier to handle large amounts on a small dedicated device rather than a dedicated computer. It is both cheaper, easier, and requires less space. Therefore the security considerations of the autopay feature made us pull it.
We will add it back in, but we want to do it right, with daily limits or something. Please have a little patience, we have a huge pile of requests, and we want to do it right.

"Forced" backup:
You won't believe how many (sometimes angry) emails I have received because of Bitcoin loss. In the end it always falls back to the developers <-- me & Andreas. I don't like people being angry at me, and I don't like that people loose money. If I can choose I'd prefer to have Technomage be angry with me because he gets reminded to be responsible with his own money
Bitcoin is all about being in control of your own money, and with that comes responsibility <--- this is really hard for many people to grasp, especially newcomers.
We wish to help our users as best we can to remember to make backups and make it both secure and easy. I believe we have achieved that with this release.
I do recognize that some of you (my guess is very few of you) don't care whether you loose your private keys. My suggestion is to add an option which is available in Expert Mode, that allows you to ignore backups. If we make it, it will require several "OK" acknowledgements and/or require the user to enter "I UNDERSTAND"... or something.

So I hate to bring this up... but it's sort of imperitive... will you release a Litecoin version of MyCelium wallet? Litecoin is kind of becoming a BIG deal now.

Please do not let uses bypass this. The point is, you need to protect users from themselves. This is something which will be used by mainstream users.
How many times have you seen in these forums or Reddit where people have forgotten their wallet.dat passwords and lost hundreds of bitcoins?

You are right. But what I would prefer is if you allow (by configuration) to use a set of random words like Electrum (diceware style) as opposed to the random letters etc.

Even NFC credit cards are becoming a big thing in the EU. You can just tap them and it will deduct a maximum of 30 Euro.

Yes, please, put it back. Also having BTC values is much better IMHO, because you don't have to rely on any external parameter/api.

I wouldn't mind having to set a BTC based limit. It's an advanced feature anyway so that would be fine.


I don't mind the verification feature in itself, it is good, my problem is that it is mandatory. If there was any way of disabling the backup warning, it would fix any issues I have with it.


I do agree with this. What I meant is that for User Interface purposes you should not force security down the user's throat if the main purpose of that wallet is to be convenient. There must be a balance, and what I meant is that with the mandatory backup verification you broke that balance.

Mycelium for me represents the high end of convenient Bitcoin payments. I recently went to demo Bitcoin payments to a restaurant and I always like to show off the autopay feature, and it didnt work anymore, it was a disappointment. Then I had to work with the extremely annoying mandatory backup verification. These changes were significantly removing the convenience factor.

I think you can strike a great balance between usability and security and you've done a great job so far. Better job than many others. I'm hard on you because I really like the wallet and want it to be as good as possible. I'm always telling people to use Mycelium if they want a convenient payment wallet for Bitcoin.

Thanks everyone for their constructive feedback!

1) We did not think anyone would notice autopay gone, so you have proved us wrong. With some security enhancements it can make a comeback. One particular problem was the fix in fiat. What do you think about a limit set in btc/mBtc/uBtc ? That would make the process more secure, faster (because it does not need to wait for up-to-date exchagne rate), and ready for offline payments.

2) Save-to-sdcard/phone is an important feature, as well as "show as qr code" for encrypted backups, like the "single key export". IMO, an "airgap" as an optical link between camera+smartphone has excellent security and privacy properties.

3) Having this backup verification is very important. What good is a backup if you don't know if you will be able to use it? And yes, if the user wants, he can still shoot himself in the foot. Maybe we should add a textbox where you enter "IGNORE BACKUP WARNING" to disable the nagging?

but i have to fundamentally disagree with this statement:
while i recommend keeping funds on paper (like the encrypted pdf, or a paperwallet) all bitcoin software must be taken to the highest standards. for example, if you keep a private key unecrypted on your phone sdcard on a well-known location, this will invite malware to take it. this is one of the reasons we decided to discontinue JPG backups.

Finally got around to trying out the newest version and backing up the keys on one of my phones. Here's my feedback:

1) This method of backing up is excellent. It's reasonably simple, and having the necessary components be split into two parts (the PDF and the password) allows for a lot of flexibility. While I personally am a little nervous about the idea of having to decrypt the keys by hand should I not have access to Mycelium (I like to have low-level access to my data,) I understand most people will never even think of this. And, I can always write out the private keys by hand anyway. Great work on this!

2) I've never used the autopay feature, but then I don't spend my bitcoins all that often. But I can see how for those who do, this could be a very big deal. It never got in the way when I wasn't using it. I can see wanting to limit the overall spending though; a spending cap (that goes down whenever a spend occurs) may be a good solution for that since "power users" shouldn't mind setting that up.

3) I do think the "forced backup" and highly visible backup notices is a bit of overkill. Before this version of the app, I wrote down all my private keys by hand. To suddenly have the app decide my keys aren't backed up, with no way to get rid of the message other than using the PDF-and-verify method, was a bit annoying. Being able to inform the app that you've backed up already would be a nice alternative option; you can't protect users from all their mistakes forever.

4) I noticed and missed the lack of ability to swipe between keys right away, but I'm already over it.

5) An option to send the PDF to the memory card would be great.

Until the feature is implemented, you can try installing the Save to Phone app. It provides a Share destination which simply saves the shared data to a file on your phone. Works with Mycelium and any other application with a Share action. I used this myself to transfer the backup .pdf to my PC. Hard to believe this isn't built in to Android...

Also it was a bad idea to force users to verify the backup. They actually have to access the backup and verify it, otherwise there will be an annoying message about that visible at all times. I don't want to access my backup unless I actually have to. Accessing it in itself makes it more likely that something will go wrong. It's an unneeded step. Some of the biggest mistakes with Bitcoin wallets have happened when a user is in a hurry to "secure the wallet". Who knows, I could've pasted the private key to IRC by accident while verifying it (unlikely, but these things happen).

I finally was able to verify my backup after trying it in a different way, but it was a pain in the ass.

It's _quite_ enough for a smartphone wallet to simply whine about the backups until the user clicks on the "I have backed up my wallet. Please stop annoying me" -button. If a user is stupid enough to click on that and not actually have a backup, it's fully their own responsibility. What happens now is that they might not even use the wallet in the first place because of the annoying feature.

Some of the changes in the wallet were actually good. UI changes with the menus and sending/receiving bitcoins are much clearer now. Removing the instapay feature and adding significant annoyance regarding backups was a huge step back however. I'm reluctant to recommend this wallet anymore as the most convenient Bitcoin wallet out there, however I'm not quite sure which one is more convenient. Mycelium just used to be light years ahead of the others, not anymore.

I agree, it should be configurable.

Are you serious? That is a killer feature. I've used it ever since it was introduced, and when I demo Bitcoin payments it's especially neat. Please put it back, it's an optional feature after all.


Can't see how this is a showstopper. Simply add a security rule which limits the overall use of the feature.

Smartphone wallets aren't supposed to be the wallets where you keep large amounts anyway, so I don't see why it should even be a goal for you to make it "ultra secure".

Security isn't the top focus of a smartphone wallet, usability is. What you've done now is add annoying security features and removed the killer usability feature. With this I don't mean you can forget security: not at all. It's just that for a smartphone wallet the sane approach is keeping only moderate amounts there, for using. Thus usability is #1, security #2. This is different for wallets designed to store large amounts of coins.

Do no not yet have NFC support, so I cannot tell exactly how it will work.

Nice ASCII art ;-)

We discussed this quite a bit... and I lost :-)
At version 0.1 - 0.6 (or so) keys/addresses page was on the left
At version 0.7.x - 0.8.x Keys/addresses was on a separate page (some people hated it because it was too difficult to switch address)
At version 0.8.x Keys/addresses was on a separate page and you could swipe addresses at the top. (some people hated it because key management was still too far away)
At version 1.0 keys/addresses is back at the left. Nn address swiping at the top.

I like it the way it is now for several reasons:
1. It is easy to swipe left to switch address, and you even get a nice overview with balances and everything
2. In version 0.8.x, when you have several addresses, it actually took long time to swipe one address at a time at the top
3. I don't think there should be too many ways of doing the same thing. It is confusing

Is it the same with NFC?

We removed it for two reasons:
1. We always strive to simplify: Nobody ever reported using it
2. Most importantly: Since any app (including a barcode scanner) can launch the wallet with a bitcoin URI, it would be possible to use the autopay feature continously to empty your wallet.

Alternatively you could do this:

___________________________________
|keys|balance|transactions|addressbook|
|---------------------------------------
|                                   ``````    /\  |
|         1bitcoinaddress      `  qr  `       |  
|                                   `       `   \/  |
|                                   ``````        |
|--------------------------------------|
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|_________________________________|

I also miss something. The ability to select different addresses by swiping left or right over the address/QR code region.
I realise why you have changed it but maybe there is a solution. If you put a two arrows to the left and right of the address area we could still change address without having to swipe into the keys page, select address then swipe back to the main screen.

See my terrible ASCII art for an illustration of what I mean:

___________________________________
|keys|balance|transactions|addressbook|
|---------------------------------------
|                                    ``````        |
|  <<   1bitcoinaddress       `  qr  `  >> | 
|                                    `       `       |
|                                    ``````        |
|--------------------------------------|
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|                                                     |
|_________________________________|

That is how it used to be! I had mine set at 20 EUR (you can set an EUR amount for the threshold). A brilliant feature, but gone for now.

+1

Or even better, let user decide what is the max threshold for auto confirm.