Thread by @sethisimmons

1/ Decided to finally take the leap and test out @SamouraiWallet w/ Dojo end-to-end.

I try to keep an open mind and keep testing out privacy tools outside of #Monero, and had not yet tested the Dojo portion of Samourai.

I’ll detail findings in this thread:

2/ Install was relatively easy for someone with a sysadmin background, but did require generation of *many* passwords and API keys.

Integration with my existing Tor relay/node was vague, need to look into how I can better integrate Dojo into my existing Tor setup.

3/ The actual installation took about ~10m, with the sync of the Bitcoin node kicking off after that.

Once the Bitcoin node syncs up, I’ll report back here in this thread 🙂

Should be ~4-6h from my previous testing!

4/ Another quick finding from the install — would be greatly simplified for end users if he “./dojo install” step presented password prompts and filled in the config files as you go, instead of requiring manually editing several distinct config files.

Pretty painless, still!

5/ Still syncing my node (~39% done, but had to start/stop a few times for host reboots), but playing around with the build in Onion explorer and maintenance tool are pretty clean and helpful for non-CLI users.

Great to see these included and published via Tor by default!

6/ Node synced and seems to be fully functional, but having issues getting my wallet to pair properly.

This is all I get whenever I scan it and try to enable:

Anyone know what I’m doing wrong here/can try?

7/ Samourai users got me up and running! Connected to the Whirlpool GUI using my own Dojo node and the Samourai wallet 😀

Now to test out some mixing...

8/ Whirlpool desktop GUI UI is very smooth, quite simple to see where in the process each UTXO is, and pool-selection is automatic which greatly simplifies things.

Was able to easily mix down change in a smaller pool, would be nice for that to be automated as well.

Mixing...

9/ Finished mixing for a total of 1.5% fees, and ended up with a good bit in unmixable change.

To preserve the privacy of the mix as much as possible, I spent all to unique addresses per UTXO, and will be careful not to recombine later on.

10/ It's still very time consuming to send funds en masse, as sending each UTXO individually to unique addresses took me ~30m of focused time to be sure I preserved the privacy of the mix.

Sending the funds took another $2, for a total of about $37.50 to mix this batch of $BTC.

11/ Key takeaways:

* @SamouraiWallet is by far the best privacy-preserving #Bitcoin wallet I have used to date, and has strong post-mix UTXO controls
* Mixing was painless once I got the GUI up and running
* Shifting between GUI and mobile was easy and a great plus

12/ Key takeaways (continued):

* #Bitcoin remains extremely expensive to transact privately, and fees are cheap (comparatively) at present
* To send funds privately, took $37.50 and about 4.5h total, quite time consuming and costly, even with the ease of use of Samourai

13/ Key takeaways (continued):

* If you must use #Bitcoin to transact, use @SamouraiWallet -- there just isn't a close alternative, and it provides the most basic level of privacy needed (IMO)

14/ Conclusions:

Overall, @SamouraiWallet is a great tool, and one that goes to great lengths to add some privacy to #Bitcoin. My biggest fear and issues remain with the base layer, and not with the apps built on top, as privacy will continue to get more expensive on-chain.

f/ Conclusions (continued):

Hopefully people like @SamouraiWallet will continue to do the hard work of building out privacy tools, and hopefully strong privacy features will come to the base layer to aid them.

It's a great tool that addresses Bitcoins most glaring flaw.