Clients: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:52, 10 July 2012

This table compares the features of the different clients.

Wallet Security: How well the client protects your private keys from people with access to the machine the wallet is stored on. The private keys can be encrypted, for example.
Network Security: Clients which more fully implement the Bitcoin network protocol are safer -- they can't be as easily tricked by powerful attackers. A client which fully implements the protocol will always use the correct block chain and will never allow double-spends or invalid transactions to exist in the block chain under any circumstances. Clients which only partially implement the protocol typically trust that 50% or more of the network's mining power is honest. Some clients trust one or more remote servers to protect them from double-spends and other network attacks.
Setup Time: Some clients require that you download and verify a large amount of data before you can send or receive BTC.
Maturity: When the project was started.

Client	Armory	Bitcoin Wallet	Bitcoin-Qt	bitcoind	Electrum	MultiBit	My Wallet
Get Started	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download	Download	eWallet
Audience	Power users	End-users	End-users	Programmers	Power users	End-users	Everyone
Wallet Security	Encryption	Isolated	Encryption	Encryption	Encryption	None	Encryption
Network Security	Addon	Partial	Full	Full	Minimal	Partial	Remote
Backups	One-time	Manual	Manual	Manual	Memorized	No	Automatic
Setup Time	Varies	1 hour	Hours	Hours	Minutes	1 hour	Minutes
Disk Space	2+ GB	30 MB	2+ GB	2+ GB	5 MB	50 MB	None
Maturity	Jul 2011	Mar 2011	May 2011	Aug 2009	Nov 2011	Jul 2011	Dec 2011
License	AGPLv3	GPLv3	MIT	MIT	GPLv3	MIT	BSD*
Multi-user	Multi-wallet	No	No	Virtual accounts	No	Multi-wallet	Yes
Available For

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+This table compares the features of the different clients.
+===Feature key===
+; Wallet Security : How well the client protects your [[private key]]s from people with access to the machine the wallet is stored on. The private keys can be encrypted, for example.
+; Network Security : Clients which more fully implement the Bitcoin network protocol are safer -- they can't be as easily tricked by powerful attackers. A client which ''fully'' implements the protocol will always use the correct [[block chain]] and will never allow [[double-spending|double-spends]] or invalid transactions to exist in the block chain under any circumstances. Clients which only ''partially'' implement the protocol typically trust that 50% or more of the network's mining power is honest. Some clients trust one or more ''remote servers'' to protect them from double-spends and other network attacks.
+; Setup Time : Some clients require that you download and verify a large amount of data before you can send or receive BTC.
+; Maturity : When the project was started.
+===Table===
 <!-- please keep this alphabetic -->
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