craigraw

Sparrow v2.5.5 has been released with a number of bug fixes following recent security reviews, and adds a system theme option following the OS light or dark setting.

Thank you to all the contributors and security researchers who provided input on this release.

Changelog: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.5.5

Download: https://sparrowwallet.com/download

Sparrow v2.5.4 has been released, delivering the results of several extensive security reviews.

Thank you to all the contributors and security researchers who provided input on this release.

Changelog: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.5.4

Download: https://sparrowwallet.com/download

Sparrow v2.5.3 has been released to fix a bug when importing BIP329 wallet labels.

It also adds opt-in XDG base directory support, and ERA hardware wallet to the list of airgapped options.

Changelog: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.5.3

Update: the App Review Board has confirmed that my Apple Developer account will not be terminated. Sparrow on macOS is safe.

Thank you to everyone who shared and reached out in the past 24 hours - I'm grateful. Credit to Apple for reviewing the appeal and reaching the right outcome - it could have gone another way.

The deeper problem hasn't gone away: apps impersonating Sparrow Wallet are still reaching users and putting their funds at risk. I'll keep working on this, hopefully with Apple's support.

Thanks all.

For those with X accounts: I would appreciate any reposts of https://x.com/SparrowWallet/status/2069125045167775896.

Unless Apple’s decision to terminate my Apple Developer account is reversed by June 30, all new installs of Sparrow will fail, and development on macOS will end.

Sparrow v2.5.2 has been released to strengthen PSBT verification on load and add dust detection for SP wallets, along with several smaller fixes.

Changelog: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.5.2

https://sparrowwallet.com/download

Sparrow v2.5.1 has been released to fix a UI issue where the wrong script type was selected on loading a wallet with a non-default type.

In addition, BIP322 message signing has been adjusted to match the now completed BIP.

Changelog: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.5.1

Sparrow v2.5.0 released with:

Silent Payments (SP) wallets SP-capable Frigate public server from 2140.dev bitview.space fee rates source

https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.5.0

https://sparrowwallet.com/download

Your anonymity set is much smaller than you think it is. 70% of spendable outputs are sent to previously used addresses. Data by

.

https://bitview.space/charts/network/addresses/reused/outputs/share/1y

Frigate v1.4.0 has been released with significant performance improvements. It’s not just another release though. Here’s why:

Silent payments is not just a new approach to static payment codes. It's the first serious contender to improve the address derivation system since HD wallets in 2013. HD wallets were a big win over single keys, and silent payments could be a similar leap forward.

Why? The first reason is of course static payment codes, which with BIP353 look like ₿[email protected]. A payment system which requires an back-and-forth interaction for every new payment to maintain receiver privacy is archaic, so this is long overdue.

Perhaps more important though is the corollary: address reuse is eliminated. Because every address is calculated using the transaction inputs - which can only be spent once - every address is guaranteed to be unique, addressing the original privacy problem in the whitepaper.

And as a bonus, the gap limit is eliminated too. The gap limit is how far ahead HD wallets look for transactions, and is the reason restoring a wallet can miss transactions if too many addresses were generated without receiving payments.

With these advantages, you might ask why silent payments is not already the default wallet type. The reason lies in an apparently fatal flaw - scanning for received transactions requires significant computation on every transaction that might contain a silent payments output.

Naively this means retrieving every block and performing thousands of computations on it just to see if it has any outputs to your wallet. This is incredibly onerous, and an immediate non-starter.

Fortunately the silent payments BIP suggested an immediate improvement - reducing the information needed from the block to just one public key per transaction. This was a big step forward, reducing each block to about 50-100 kilobytes of data.

It's not enough though. Catching up a few months takes an hour when on mobile it must occur within a few seconds. Users give up quickly, and iOS severely limits background computation. In practice the mobile wallet experience is unusable.

Further, downloading megabytes of data to scan a wallet is too expensive for many mobile users. And most mobile phones don't have nearly enough compute to attempt the scanning within a reasonable time period. I decided to try a different approach: Frigate.

Frigate is an experimental Electrum server for silent payments scanning. In moving the scanning burden to the server, you give up some privacy. But so long as you keep the client data ephemeral (not saved to disk), privacy is similar to that of Electrum servers for HD wallets.

Performance is essential. The fastest way to perform the computation on all the block data is to put it in a database, and then create a custom database function to perform the computation inside the database. This avoids copying it out for every scan.

This was the first step, and it took scanning a few months of blocks from an hour down to a minute. Promising, but not enough - and the server's CPU was saturated, making it less responsive to other requests.

The second step was performing the compute on a GPU. Because every transaction can be scanned independently, a highly parallel pipeline is possible. The GPU computation was implemented as a database function, and brought a few months of scanning down to a handful of seconds.

Just as importantly, the CPU was freed up to do other things. This was again promising, but not enough - it required powerful hardware, and was still only marginally capable enough for a public server. More was required.

The solution lay in optimizing the computation. Optimization typically gives modest improvements, but using a new library (UltrafastSecp256k1) delivered an incredible ~14x improvement in scanning time on the same GPU. A few months of scanning can now be done in half a second.

This is a breakthrough because it makes silent payments wallets on mobile easy. A public server with a few GPUs can handle thousands of connected wallets, and wallets sync immediately.

And it goes further - Frigate supports CUDA, OpenCL and Metal GPU backends. Practically this means most chips produced in the last decade can be used - integrated GPUs, Apple Silicon, and discrete NVIDIA and AMD boards - allowing existing nodes to leverage unused GPU capacity.

Frigate is still experimental. But it proves for the first time that silent payments wallets are practical for widespread adoption. This is not only a long overdue upgrade for Bitcoin wallets, but a significant step forward for privacy.

https://github.com/sparrowwallet/frigate

Sparrow v2.4.2 has been released to fix issues in the transaction editor and improve certificate pinning for TLS connections.

Support has also been added for v3 transactions in the transaction editor.

Changelog here: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.4.2

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v2.4.1 has been released to fix higher CPU usage on some platforms due to a screen layout issue.

In addition, it's now possible to configure a custom wallets directory by opening a wallet from a non-default location.

Changelog here: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.4.1

https://sparrowwallet.com/download

Sparrow v2.4.0 released with:

Send to silent payments hardware wallet support Address display chunking Wallet discovery for USB hardware wallets Codex32 support Trezor Safe 7, Ledger Nano Gen5, Keycard and Keycard Shell support

https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.4.0

https://sparrowwallet.com/download

Sparrow v2.3.1 has been released to restore BIP32 derivations for consolidation payments in PSBTs.

In addition, hiding amounts is now supported, and the keystores that signed a multisig transaction are now shown on the transaction tab.

Changelog here: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.3.1

Frigate v1.2.0 has been released.

Frigate is an experimental Electrum server testing efficient Silent Payments scanning with ephemeral keys.

The major feature in this release is GPU acceleration of the cryptographic computation required for Silent Payments scanning. This provides a dramatic (over 10x) performance improvement over CPU computation, and makes a public Silent Payments Electrum server a practical reality for the first time.

To learn more, see https://github.com/sparrowwallet/frigate

Sparrow v2.3.0 released with:

Send to Silent Payments Pay to DNS address Min fee rate from server

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.3.0

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Announcing Frigate.

Frigate is an experimental Electrum server testing efficient Silent Payments scanning with ephemeral client keys.

Note that Frigate is currently a proof of concept for supporting Silent Payments on Electrum servers, and not a replacement for Electrs, Fulcrum etc.

If you are a developer interested in exploring Silent Payments scanning, check out https://github.com/sparrowwallet/frigate

Sparrow v2.2.3 has been released to fix some issues scanning QR codes on Linux, and includes other minor improvements.

Release notes: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.2.3

Sparrow v2.2.2 has been released to fix a minor issue introduced in v2.2.1 when creating a wallet on a new installation.

Release notes: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.2.2 nevent1qqszm2pjnt464tu242awrwkyvqgt590rvsf2lk7lgj0glpae0ts0eps8xmcjs

Sparrow v2.2.1 has been released to fix an issue starting Tor on recent macOS versions, as well as other minor fixes.

Release notes: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.2.1 nevent1qqszm2pjnt464tu242awrwkyvqgt590rvsf2lk7lgj0glpae0ts0eps8xmcjs

Sparrow v2.2.0 released with:

• Recent Blocks view • Improved camera support • Dark mode improvements

And much more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.2.0

Sparrow v2.1.3 has been released with OneKey hardware wallet support, expanded wallet labels (BIP329) export, and some remaining Lark integration fixes.

Release notes: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.1.3

Download: https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v2.1.2 has been released to fix a bug with transaction file loading, and signing on older Ledger devices.

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v2.1.1 has been released to fix a technical issue when scanning for USB hardware wallets on certain macOS devices.

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v2.1.0 released with:

• Lark for USB hardware wallets • Ledger multisig wallet registration save • Jade Plus USB support • Restore tables sort & sizing on wallet load • PSBTv2 support

And much more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.1.0

http://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Introducing Lark.

Lark is a Java port of HWI, a library used by many wallets to communicate over USB with with hardware wallets like

, Ledger, Trezor,

and

Jade.

HWI is a good example of the ‘single dependency’ situation in the famous xkcd comic. Until now, there has been no project like it.

However, with all the wealth stored on hardware wallets (especially those that can only communicate over USB) it's important to have multiple implementations. Lark represents the first complete reimplementation of all common USB HWW clients in a language other than Python.

Even though HWW manufacturers have used a dizzying array of different communication protocols and standards, Lark seeks to be identical to the HWI API, providing direct interchangeability and a more robust ecosystem.

All common commands are supported, and there is some additional functionality, such as retrieving a wallet registration from Ledger devices to avoid re-registration on every signing.

Lark is available as a command line application, and as a Java library for JVM-based applications. Hardware wallet manufacturers are invited to test their devices before it's integrated into Sparrow Wallet.

See https://github.com/sparrowwallet/larkapp for docs and binaries.

Sparrow v2.0.0 released with:

SLIP39 shares recovery Trezor Safe 5 support Ledger Stax and Flex support Update to Java and JavaFX 22

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/2.0.0

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

It is a flaw of the deeply self-interested men of the world that they assume that idealists are fools.

• Christian Cameron

Sparrow v1.9.1 released with:

Testnet4 network support Increase gap limit to sign

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.9.1

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

In light of recent developments, Sparrow v1.9.0 has been released which removes the Whirlpool client and other Soroban related features. All wallets and accounts are still accessible.

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v1.8.6 released with:

Wallet search improvements All open wallets summary Mix from Postmix Import Samourai backup file

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.6

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v1.8.5 released with:

Whirlpool over decentralized Soroban Restart in different Home Folder Faster initial server connections Upgrade to HWI 3.0.0

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.5

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v1.8.4 has been released to fix a build issue affecting Sparrow Terminal. The normal desktop app is unaffected.

That said, for those who already upgraded to v1.8.3, it's a good opportunity to test the Download Verifier :)

Sparrow v1.8.3 released with:

PGP download file verifier Coldcard Q1 support Trezor Safe 3 support Improved QR reading

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.3

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/ https://image.nostr.build/dd9ad8e9ad16b81e4b1638d76cad23e7c094d6314e9773605188297a375f524f.png

If you are ever in South Africa, a visit to Bitcoin Ekasi in Mossel Bay is well worth it!

Sparrow v1.8.2 released with:

Improved transaction tree Quicker transaction tab loading Reduced rescans on Bitcoin Core Effective fee rate for CPFP

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.2

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v1.8.1 released with:

Fee rate estimation from oxt.me Export transactions with historical values Wider range in fee range slider

And more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.1

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

Sparrow v1.8.0 released with:

Transaction diagram captions Larger and denser QR display Search all open wallets Airgapped message signing Satochip and Krux support

And much more: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.8.0

https://sparrowwallet.com/download/

An alternative to Tor that has users stream sats to pay relays seems like an obvious next step in network level privacy tools. Streaming sats would greatly increase the costs of the DDOS-style attacks that affect Tor so much, and provide an incentive for relay operators.

Sparrow v1.7.3 released with:

Bitcoin Secure Multisig Setup (BSMS) import and export

Configure an external block explorer to view transactions

Upgrade to HWI 2.2.1

More: https://github.com/sparrowwallet/sparrow/releases/tag/1.7.3

Thanks for the welcome all! Good to be here.

This hits hard: https://github.com/zloirock/core-js/blob/master/docs/2023-02-14-so-whats-next.md