- taproot message signing (bip322)
With big jump in using Taproot addresses more and more people are going to need to sign and verify messages for them, just look at this stats chart:
https://transactionfee.info/charts/transactions-spending-taproot/
Topic: Sparrow vs Electrum for desktop - page 3. (Read 1758 times)
With big jump in using Taproot addresses more and more people are going to need to sign and verify messages for them, just look at this stats chart:
https://transactionfee.info/charts/transactions-spending-taproot/
today also the new version of the sparrow wallet was released. with version 1.7.8 come the following changes:
https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.7.8
https://sparrowwallet.com/download/
- taproot message signing (bip322)
- improved qr scan performance
- rename wallet support
- rbf with initial minimum fee set
https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.7.8
https://sparrowwallet.com/download/
It should be well known that any SPV light client wallet gives you no privacy for your wallet's addresses history. You only have privacy if you connect it to your own Electrum server which itself requires to connect to a full Bitcoin node.
I use both Electrum and Sparrow and have a RaspiBlitz node running a Bitcoin Core node, a Fulcrum Electron server, a LND lightning node and a few gadgets more. My SPV wallets don't need to talk to third party servers.
I use both Electrum and Sparrow and have a RaspiBlitz node running a Bitcoin Core node, a Fulcrum Electron server, a LND lightning node and a few gadgets more. My SPV wallets don't need to talk to third party servers.
It will scan the blockchain to load your wallet's transaction history, but won't download the entire blockchain like a full Bitcoin client does. There is also an option to set the date of the earliest transactions in your wallet if you don't want to scan the entire blockchain.
That's not how it works. If you are not using your own node, then it connects to a third party server and queries it for transaction history of your addresses and wallets. The third party returns the necessary data, but you therefore have zero privacy from that third party.If you want to use it in a privacy preserving way with your own node or Electrum server, then you will absolutely need your node to download and sync the full blockchain first.
You are absolutely right, node must be in fully sync state but I think @logfiles meant that Sparrow client, when first creating his wallet, has an option to query node for transactions of its interest beginning from certain date rather to initiate the full scan of LevelDB kept by node. In this respect he is correct.
It will scan the blockchain to load your wallet's transaction history, but won't download the entire blockchain like a full Bitcoin client does. There is also an option to set the date of the earliest transactions in your wallet if you don't want to scan the entire blockchain.
That's not how it works. If you are not using your own node, then it connects to a third party server and queries it for transaction history of your addresses and wallets. The third party returns the necessary data, but you therefore have zero privacy from that third party.If you want to use it in a privacy preserving way with your own node or Electrum server, then you will absolutely need your node to download and sync the full blockchain first.
The only thing I need to know is how much space these guys will take up? Is it gonna be entire blockchain that will get synchronised taking up entire disk on my lappy?
It's a light walletAnd this is how much it takes up on my machine storage. I guess it also depends on how you set it up
It will scan the blockchain to load your wallet's transaction history, but won't download the entire blockchain like a full Bitcoin client does. There is also an option to set the date of the earliest transactions in your wallet if you don't want to scan the entire blockchain.
Can you elaborate though? Is it better (and for what reason), to run Electrum Server upon your node, instead of connecting Sparrow to your node?
No, it's no better or worse. In both cases, all your data will come from your own node rather than that of a third party, and so your privacy will be maintained. If you already have an Electrum server set up, then no reason not to use it.There are actually too many people that used to use Electrum since it was released and haven't switched to any other alternative. That's what made me curious.
If you are already familiar with Electrum and already have a server set up, then I see no reason to change unless you wanted to use Whirlpool.It seems I will be better using any of the wallet considering my recent break down with the Mycelium wallet for iOS. It was completely troubling to set up that wallet on iOS since it’s missing few pieces which help us import our back up and/or imported addresses. It’s far better I either keep using hardware wallet or simply get new one like electrum and sparrow.
I will see how it goes with the set up on laptop and doesn’t have lengthy process of set up. :-)
The only thing I need to know is how much space these guys will take up? Is it gonna be entire blockchain that will get synchronised taking up entire disk on my lappy?
Sparrow is also strongly supportive of privacy,
Yeah, in this regard I very like that Sparrow is automatically and constantly reverses the order of "change transactions" if you make several transactions in the row. This feature is very important to discomfort chain-analysis software in their work. Sure, one can do it the same thing in Electrum, but it requires manual control from user's part.
I have been using Electrum wallet for sometime now, got accoustomed to it interface and it's benefits. I never thought about privacy in general as I thought it is cannot do anything like coinjoin featured wallets can do. Untill now! Time to play with sparrow wallet as the point you wrote is pretty interesting. I will download the wallet for the first time and most probably use it for a few weeks. Apart from the privacy part if it has an easy to understand & react interface, then I am going to use it permanently.
Sparrow is also strongly supportive of privacy,
Yeah, in this regard I very like that Sparrow is automatically and constantly reverses the order of "change transactions" if you make several transactions in the row. This feature is very important to discomfort chain-analysis software in their work. Sure, one can do it the same thing in Electrum, but it requires manual control from user's part.
Then, coinb.in is right for you as it fits both your your needs and qualification. It’s crucial to remember that this software is better to run i on cold computer ( I recollect that you said somewhere that you have such one) and create relevant transaction being offline.
I have no need to use coinb.in - I use an airgapped Electrum wallet for importing such raw private keys. I thought single address wallets was a thing of the past
Even so, they still exist. I still have a bunch of paper wallets which use single private keys which are many years old. I'm not going to move the coins from their perfectly safe location if I don't need to, so I still need software which supports importing raw private keys. I also need more than a simple sweep function since I usually want to direct the coins form such paper wallets to more than one location, which may or may not be addresses I control.Then, coinb.in is right for you as it fits both your needs and your qualification. It’s crucial to remember that this software is better to run i on cold computer ( I recollect that you said somewhere that you have such one) and create relevant transaction being offline.
I thought single address wallets was a thing of the past
Even so, they still exist. I still have a bunch of paper wallets which use single private keys which are many years old. I'm not going to move the coins from their perfectly safe location if I don't need to, so I still need software which supports importing raw private keys. I also need more than a simple sweep function since I usually want to direct the coins form such paper wallets to more than one location, which may or may not be addresses I control. 
Sparrow doesn't offer that I use Electrum for (such as importing individual keys/addresses).
I thought single address wallets was a thing of the past, I see no reason for modern software to support this outdated technology since it directly affects the quality of wallet back ups as well as security of funds. As for Sparrow Wallet, it has an option of sweeping a single WIF private key into existing HD wallet:And maybe or maybe Electrum is better for others, but for others it's sparrow gaining more, meaning it depends on us which of the two is better.
These wallets can complement each other in certain circumstances, and they are definitely better and more secure than, for example, Atomic Wallet. 
When it comes to features between the two, as far as I know, the features of sparrow wallet are better than Electrum, although they are both popular and good to use. And both also have a large number of users to be honest.
Could you explain why both have large users? AFAIK Electrum is more popular and has more user.
In my personal knowledge, They are both easy to use, they are also well-respected wallets when it comes to the number of features they have, especially in terms of security, which I think is what we users are always looking for, because we will put Bitcoin in it.
In addition to this, they also give us control over our so-called privacy, which is of course the most important thing to us. And maybe or maybe Electrum is better for others, but for others it's sparrow gaining more, meaning it depends on us which of the two is better.
And some of those supported by sparrow are Paynyms, which is looking for the best payment for your transaction. Apart from this it also has built-in tor support. These are just a few that sparrow has more advantage in electrum.
Electrum also has built-in Tor support.That's true, thanks for the reminder. I forget such feature is exist since my system already have Tor service running. Although it seems it only use it's own Tor when you attempt connect to .onion server[1].
I know it use BIP 157/158 under the hood through getblockfilter RPC, but how good is the performance to retrieve relevant TX?
I've only ever paired Sparrow with a node running on the same device, but in this set up anything I've done on Sparrow has been pretty much instant. The only downside is of course if you import a wallet with historical transactions in to Sparrow then you have to rescan, just as if you imported a wallet with historical transactions in to Core. This is obviously not the case if you were running a full Electrum server, but of course Sparrow can connect to those too.I see. But since you mention rescan, i just checked Sparrow source code and it looks like they create new wallet[2] rather than using getblockfilter RPC.
[1] https://sparrowwallet.com/docs/faq.html#how-does-the-proxy-support-work
[2] https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/blob/1.7.7/src/main/java/com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/net/cormorant/bitcoind/BitcoindClientService.java
I know it use BIP 157/158 under the hood through getblockfilter RPC, but how good is the performance to retrieve relevant TX?
I've only ever paired Sparrow with a node running on the same device, but in this set up anything I've done on Sparrow has been pretty much instant. The only downside is of course if you import a wallet with historical transactions in to Sparrow then you have to rescan, just as if you imported a wallet with historical transactions in to Core. This is obviously not the case if you were running a full Electrum server, but of course Sparrow can connect to those too. 
And some of those supported by sparrow are Paynyms, which is looking for the best payment for your transaction. Apart from this it also has built-in tor support. These are just a few that sparrow has more advantage in electrum.
Electrum also has built-in Tor support.
Sparrow does have an advantage for new users in this regard. Electrum needs a tor node running in the background to connect through tor, it doesn't have a built-in process to create one. If the tor option is selected in Sparrow, it'll look for a background tor node but if it doesn't find one it'll start it's own, similar to how Bisq and Tor Browser work.
That's not a bad thing for new users (or experienced users 99% of the time,) but there might be a situation where a user wants more control. In my opinion control vs. ease of use is a worthy exchange, despite the extra time, skill, and resources required.
I don't disagree, and as I've said above there are still advanced features Sparrow doesn't offer that I use Electrum for (such as importing individual keys/addresses). But if you want to use Sparrow while connecting to a public server (as is the default in Electrum), again it is only three clicks (File -> Preferences -> Public Server). If you are a newbie looking to use a wallet privately, then Sparrow beats Electrum in terms of ease of use for not having to set up a server and just connecting directly to Core. I also can't think of any features that newbies would be interested in that Electrum has and Sparrow does not.
When it comes to features between the two, as far as I know, the features of sparrow wallet are better than Electrum, although they are both popular and good to use. And both also have a large number of users to be honest.
And some of those supported by sparrow are Paynyms, which is looking for the best payment for your transaction. Apart from this it also has built-in tor support. These are just a few that sparrow has more advantage in electrum.
source : https://sparrowwallet.com/
And some of those supported by sparrow are Paynyms, which is looking for the best payment for your transaction. Apart from this it also has built-in tor support. These are just a few that sparrow has more advantage in electrum.
source : https://sparrowwallet.com/
When coupled with a self-hosted SPV server, Electrum's privacy features are second to none.
I'd contest that. Sparrow is even easier to use privately than Electrum is.From an ease-of-use perspective, I totally agree. Running a full node, an Electrum server, and a block explorer requires some strong computer-fu, not to mention a significant investment in time and computer resources. Also, I didn't mean to imply that Sparrow is less private, just that Electrum can be used in ways that achieve at least an equal level of privacy.
Having an understanding of how to use a wallet with privacy in mind is a prerequisite for private use of Electrum, but Sparrow forces those methods onto it's users. That's not a bad thing for new users (or experienced users 99% of the time,) but there might be a situation where a user wants more control. In my opinion control vs. ease of use is a worthy exchange, despite the extra time, skill, and resources required.
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