Armory
| Developers | Originally Armory Technologies, Inc.; maintained by goatpig |
| License | AGPL v3 / MIT (mixed) |
| Website | https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory |
Bitcoin Armory is an open-source Bitcoin wallet and wallet-management application. It was created by Alan Reiner (Armory Technologies, Inc.) and is maintained in the goatpig/BitcoinArmory fork. Armory emphasises offline cold-storage workflows, watching-only wallets, paper backups, and integration with a local Bitcoin Core node rather than independent peer networking.[1]
Features
Documented capabilities across Armory generations include:
- Multiple wallets, including watching-only wallets
- Offline / air-gapped signing with USB transport of unsigned transactions
- Paper backups and SecurePrint-style backup printing
- Import or sweep of external keys
- Fragmented M-of-N backups (see historical caveat below)
- Decentralised multisignature "lockboxes"
- Daemon / API hooks for services
Armory does not implement its own peer network. It relies on Bitcoin Core for chain validation and broadcast.
Fragmented backup caveat
An earlier Armory fragmented-backup implementation used repeated hashing instead of a sound RNG in parts of the scheme. Analysis showed that the threshold property could fail so that an attacker with the first share plus any other share could recover the secret. See Shamir Secret Snakeoil#Armory and the related Bitcointalk discussion.[2]
History
Armory Technologies announced the project on 3 January 2012.[3] A RocketHub crowdfunding round completed on 19 March 2012. Armory Technologies later wound down maintenance. From version 0.96 onward, goatpig maintained the project.[4] The bitcoinarmory.com ATI site is historical. Current upstream is https://github.com/goatpig/BitcoinArmory.
0.97-RC1
On 20 May 2026 goatpig published pre-release tag 0.97-RC1. The release notes describe it as a testing baseline for modern operating systems, not a plug-and-play production build. Fancy features were deferred to later 0.97 minor versions and to 0.98.[5]
Release-note highlights include:
- A new pre-lobby settings manager (wallets / database / core tabs)
- New LMDB wallet format with migration from older wallets. Old wallets do not load as-is
- Fully encrypted wallet files (public and private data paths)
- BIP32 / BIP39 / BIP44 support added in code, without a finished GUI in that RC
- New signer format plus legacy unsigned-transaction compatibility for 0.96.5-era addresses
- New database design. DB_BARE default. DB_FULL present but discouraged for day-to-day use. DB_SUPER disabled
- Windows: standalone test zip build included. Maintainer had not mainnet-tested that zip on the release machine
- Linux: no package build in that cycle. Source build only
- macOS: no maintainer Mac and no macOS package in that RC. Contributions invited
Until a non-RC release is tagged, 0.97-RC1 remains a pre-release for testing.
See also
External links
- goatpig/BitcoinArmory
- 0.97-RC1 release
- Original ATI repository (unmaintained)
- bitcoinarmory.com (ATI historical)