Topic: Sparrow vs Electrum for desktop - page 4. (Read 1754 times)

Yes, Sparrow can be connected to bitcoin core in 3 clicks literally. I haven't been able to connect it over tor though. I think electrum is more table over tor, at least in my experience.

I'd contest that. Sparrow is even easier to use privately than Electrum is. There is no need to run additional server software for an Electrum server and go through the hassle of getting your server to talk to your node and your Electrum client to talk to your server, which from experience is rarely a completely straightforward task and usually throws up one or two issues. These issues are maybe easily solved for you or I, but for a newbie with no experience of such things they can completely derail the process and cause them to abandon it altogether.

With Sparrow, on the other hand, it's a simple as adding server=1 to your bitcoin.conf and then clicking the "Bitcoin Core" button in Sparrow. I was amazed the first time I used it at just how easy it was to set up.

Yeah, I know it's there, but there are still use-cases for importing single addresses.  For example; an old legacy or nested segwit HD wallet with one or two specific addresses that you want to monitor, but you don't need the whole list of addresses that wallet generated, and you don't have multiple hardware wallets to dedicate to each of those seeds.  

I've used a ton of different types of addresses for various services here on the forum (lending, escrow, signatures...) that I want available in one wallet that's convenient to access.  I've imported most of those into a single wallet on an airgapped machine, and have the public addresses in a watch only wallet on my main computer.  Otherwise I would have to restore the seed for each of those if a magic transaction appears or I want to sign a message from one of those addresses.  All of those seeds are archived, and by design, inconvenient to pull out of the archives.

Privacy isn't an issue in the scenario above, so there's no reason to not import those addresses into one wallet.  I don't intend on reusing them, but they are already out there and it doesn't hurt to to have convenient access to them.


I see it as the other way around.  I was in the habit of recommending Electrum to anyone who's starting their bitcoin journey, but recently I've been recommending Sparrow to newbies.  It's more user friendly, and has default features geared to keep new users' information private.  As people become more sophisticated and aware of how to use bitcoin privately, Electrum offers it's users a bit more control.   When coupled with a self-hosted SPV server, Electrum's privacy features are second to none.

I just downloaded Sparrow wallet, and I am quite impressed with it. Nice UI and a number of options and functionalities to play around with. I haven't explored a lot of its features, but will probably do in the coming days.
I liked the fact that they supported the taproot script type, which is still missing with electrum.

Electrum is really so cool, but sparrow going to be one of those wallets would be an excellent alternative over time.

I mainly use Electrum and Bitcoin Core for special purposes, pointing Electrum to my own Electrum server. I tested Sparrow and find it a very interesting wallet contender. It has features that set it apart from Electrum and some of them I find interesting and nice to have.

As Sparrow is rather new and I'm a bit conservative with wallets I monitor it closely and play around with it to see how it evolves. I can't judge it yet as it isn't as time-proven as Electrum is.

Under the hood of "Tools" Sparrow offers "Sweep Private Key"  which is much better option  than just  importing as it sends all funds controlled by that prv-key to new address from Sparrow's set. Sure, sweeping requires bitcoin transaction to be made, so Sparrow must be connected to do the action.

BTW, 1.7.7. version has been released 2 days ago.

If I'm importing single private keys, then I am pretty much exclusively doing it on an offline machine to sign a transaction created from a watch only wallet. The wallet on my airgapped machine will never connect to my node. It's simply easier to use a light wallet such as Electrum (or Sparrow, if it had this function) on your airgapped machine than it is to use Core.

I would say the built in coinjoin, stonewall, and stowaway transaction functionality is a significant feature that Electrum does not have, if this kind of thing interests you.

There are indeed plenty of use-cases where one would want to import a single key, but like you said, there are other wallets to use for that.  In fact, since it really does make a lot of sense to have your own node running for private use of Sparrow, one could use core to import single keys when the need arises.

As for a perfect wallet for power users, Electrum was that wallet in the past, and it'll likely be again once the developers implement Taproot.  At this point, that's really the only significant feature where Sparrow has a leg-up on Electrum.

Agreed. It's their world so to speak and we are just living in it, but there are a lot of reasons to want to import a single key.
OTOH, there are enough other ways to do it that it does not matter that much.

Makes you wonder if there really is a 'perfect' wallet out there for power users. Or all of us here going to be running multiple ones.

The 'normal' users probably don't care and the rest of us run all of them to get all the features we need / want.

-Dave

The reason I've seen given on their GitHub for this is to discourage address reuse. I can appreciate that, but conversely I occasionally have the need to import a single private key and I won't reuse the address, such as sweeping paper wallets. It would be nice to have this feature even if it was hidden behind "Advanced Options" or similar.

I started playing with Sparrow again last night, and I must say it is an impressive wallet.  Lots of great features, and a very user friendly UI.  Not to mention that it's among the few hierarchical deterministic wallets (other than core) that can generate taproot addresses.  As far as I know it might be the only taproot wallet with Bip39 seed phrase backups.

The only thing I can't get my head around is why they haven't implemented the ability to import single private keys.  You can import a master private key, but single private keys or single addresses for watching, can't be imported.  Maybe the development team is focusing on private use of bitcoin, and importing single keys isn't conducive to the preservation of privacy, but other than that I can't see why the feature isn't there.

For me the most noticeable advantage of Sparrow  is its ability to pair and subsequently work   with airgapped hardware wallets  via QR codes. (Sure not all  airgapped HW  are pliable to such   type of pairing and communication but my Passport 2  is capable to do these). Electrum does it exclusively via json file.

btw today also the new version of the sparrow wallet was released. with version 1.7.7 come the following changes:

• Improved mempool fee rates chart
• Multiple improvements for a high fee environment
• Performance optimizations for large wallets

in addition, with this release comes a border wallets integration & ux

https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.7.7
https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

I will save this answer on a notepad. Thanks

You can:

• Wait
• Create a new transaction with a higher fee
• Broadcast it anyway and hope for the best
• Broadcast it anyway and create a new transaction with a higher fee to replace the existing one should it not confirm in a reasonable time
• Direct the change to a single sig wallet you control so you can use CPFP

Excellent. But, the obvious question here is: what happens if I have signed a transaction with a fee of let's say 20sat/vB, but when I go to the other cosigner the fee is too low? Should I wait? Should I initiate another transaction and sign it with a higher fee using the cosigner where I am and then travel back to the other cosigner? This question also applies to timelocked transactions, and I think the answers are obvious, but somewhat inconvenient. Don't you think?

Not a hash of the transaction, but the transaction itself. But yes, you can do this.

You would simply create the transaction on the first wallet, and sign it with that wallet, before exporting the transaction (the specifics of this will depend on the wallet you are using). You can usually export it as some form of raw text, save it to a file, generate a QR code, etc. Then you can send that partially signed transaction to another destination electronically, or put it on a USB drive, SD card, your phone, etc., and carry it with you. Once you have access to the second wallet, you import it, sign it with this second wallet, and then you are ready to broadcast it.

Hi! Supposing I have set a 2-of-3 multisig vault, my question actually is whether I can sign a transaction in New York, then take a hash of a partially signed transaction and then go to San Diego in order to sign with my second cosigner.

The afforementioned cities are examples only.

When you set up a multisig wallet, you will need enough co-signers to sign your transactions. If you set up a 3/5 co-signer multisig, you will need 3 of 5 co-signers to sign your transactions.

Any of those 5 co-signers can sign it, no need to have any co-signer in order. When a transaction gets enough co-signers sign it, it will be executed.

One more question! For signing transactions, which one is more easy and convenient?

Let's say I want to sign a transactions using 2 cosigners from my 2-of-3 multisig, which one is easier to use?

How easy is it to use a signing device to sign a transaction?

How easy is it to sign with one cosigner and then wait till I get to where the other cosigner is in order to sign too?