Electrum

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Revision as of 12:15, 20 February 2012 by ThomasV (talk | contribs)
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Electrum is a lightweight Bitcoin client, based on a client-server protocol. It was released on november 5, 2011.

Main features:

  • Encrypted wallet
  • Deterministic key generation. If you lose your wallet, you can recover it from its passphrase.
  • No blockchain download; the client requests that information from a server
  • Private keys are not shared with the server.
  • Firewall friendly: The client does not need to open a port, it simply polls the server for updates.
  • No single point of failure: The server code is open source, anyone can run a server.
  • Python. Very compact code, easy to contribute.

Brain Wallet

Electrum uses a type 2 deterministic key generation algorithm. This means that all the keys are derived from a seed.

Electrum makes it easy to memorize its seed, because it uses a mnemonic code.

Example:

  • hexadecimal: 8a44dfd6ad4f687b5e3c80563c327027
  • mnemonic: "shade weave eternity kept true tangle new talk clay warmth fish match"



Screenshot

Security

See Thin Client Security

links