Session:Bitcoin, Lightning Network, Ethereum for newbs
| Description | basics : how to create a crypto wallet, backup and to transact |
|---|---|
| Website(s) | |
| Type | Hands-On |
| Kids session | No |
| Keyword(s) | |
| Tags | Bitcoin, Lightning Network, Ethereum, cryptocurrencies, decentralisation, privacy |
| Processing village | Village:Lemanicus |
| Person organizing | User:Polto |
| Language | en - English |
Other sessions...
| |
| Subtitle | Hands-on cryptocurrency wallet |
|---|---|
| Starts at | 2019/08/21 21:00 |
| Ends at | 2019/08/21 22:00 |
| Duration | 60 minutes |
| Location | Room:Johnson (Workshop 1) |
| Subtitle | Hands-on cryptocurrency wallet |
|---|---|
| Starts at | 2019/08/22 21:00 |
| Ends at | 2019/08/22 22:00 |
| Duration | 60 minutes |
| Location | Room:Johnson (Workshop 1) |
| Subtitle | Hands-on cryptocurrency wallet |
|---|---|
| Starts at | 2019/08/23 18:00 |
| Ends at | 2019/08/23 19:00 |
| Duration | 60 minutes |
| Location | Room:Johnson (Workshop 1) |
Cryptocurrencies workshop for beguiners.
We can go quite technical if you want, but the workshop does not require any prior knowledge in cryprocurrencies.
I will help you to create a wallet, show how to backup your wallet and how to transact.
We may discuss different types of software and hardware walet. Their difference in terms of privacy and security.
If you have any questions to understand the underlying standards (BIPs) we can discuss (on a high level) how they work.
We will talk about : Bitcoin, Lightning Network & Ethereum. No shitcoins please. (only to ask why they are shitcoins)
Contents
Required hardware - one of
You will need a phone or a PC/Mac to install a wallet. You may also want to use a hardware wallet, they generally have a PC/Mac software, most are compatible with third party software.
There are different wallets, some support multiple currencies - generally they are very BAD. In general only wallets supporting a single cryptocurrency may support some of the advanced privicy and security feature.
Suggested ressource - https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet
Android wallet
For Bitcoin I personally like Mycelium & Electrum wallets - because they also supports hardware wallets and some privacy features.
Eclair mobile wallet supports Lightnening Network.
Samourai wallet also have some unique privacy features.
For Ethereum I can suggest you Trust wallet, Coinbase wallet or Argent wallet. Argent is an interesting smart-contract based wallet having many interesting features such as seedless recovery.
iOS wallet
I do not know any recommendable Bitcoin wallet for iOS. Let me know if you have something to recommend.
For Ethereum I am really suggeting Argent wallet on iOS.
MacOS / GNU/Linux wallet
Electrum & Wasabi are a good Bitcoin wallets for Mac and PC, they both support hardware wallets. For Lightning Network browser plugin wallet you can use lightningjoule.
For Ethereum I would recomend MyCrypto or MyEtherWallet installed locally. If you want a browser plugin you can use MetaMask.
The most "conservative", privacy respecting and decentralised way to use both Bitcoin and Ethereum is obviously to run your full node. Bitcoin-core and Geth or Parity are main clients for Bitcoin and Ethereum networks.
About Bitcoin addresses
How wallet addresses are generated
Bitcoin have a very flexible and upgradable way of generating addresses. By the way you will see that address is probably a very missleading term.
In the old days Bitcoin used P2PK, it's not used anymore it was replaced by P2PKH and later by P2SH, many new other address types are and will be available.
No address reuse
Bitcoin address uses several layers of security, but as soon as you broadcast a signed transaction and the corresponding public key it is again exposed to attacs. So it's a good practice in Bitcoin not to reuse addresses. For doing so when you spend some funds your wallet will create a "change address" and wire the rest of your funds to this newlly created address.
Avoiding address reuse also slightly increase privacy.
HD wallets
The "no address reuse" policy forces you to create a new key every time you want to send or to receive a transaction.
Before HD wallets it was very painful to handle proper key generation and backups.
HD is an abbreviation for Hierarchical Deterministic. This type of wallets use a way to Hierarchically and Deterministicly derive private keys, public keys and addresses from one single secret key to backup. Usually called a SEED. One common way of backing up and restoring the seed is using a mnemonic passphrase. (12 to 24 words)
About Ethereum addresses
Seeing advances in Bitcoin address clustering and other privacy destroing techniques Ethereum community descided that pseudo-anonymity is not enough, but experience confirmed that full anonymity may brake sound-mony by obfuscating new emission.
So Ethereum choosed to have an accounts (similar to bank account) instead of UTXO based model as Bitcoin does.
Ethereum community started with fully transparent public accounts with absolutely no privacy and hopes to integrate zkSNARKS , ring signatures, Schnorr signatures and other privacy enhancing technologies.
Ethereum HD wallets do only use 1 address per label/account level and do not have change addresses.
Backup a wallet
3-2-1 Backup. 3 copies, 2 mediums (paper/file on usb stick/metal) 1 off site.
useful links
BIPs
• https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0021.mediawiki - URI scheme for Bitcoin payments
• https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki - Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets
• https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0038.mediawiki - Passphrase-protected private key
• https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki - Mnemonic code for generating deterministic keys
• https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0044.mediawiki - Derivation Scheme for standard (non segwit) accounts
• https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0049.mediawiki - Derivation Scheme for Segwit Compatibility based accounts
• https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0084.mediawiki - Derivation Scheme for Native Segwit based accounts
useful tools
• https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ - generate HD wallets for testing/debuging and understanding.
• https://ledgerhq.github.io/ledger-wallet-webtool/ - ledger web-wallet software. https://github.com/LedgerHQ/ledger-wallet-webtool
• https://dappnode.io - easily deploy, use and maintain VPN + full nodes. (Ethereum, IPFS, Swarm, Bitcoin, Lightning Network, Cosmos, ...
