I'm developing an open source Bitcoin wallet. It's non-custodial, browser-based. The most common question I get asked about this is "Why?" The answer is that I like Bitcoin and I like programming and I want to start a Bitcoin project from scratch.

If you like Bitcoin too, have a good sense of UX / Product management, and want to drive the development of a new Bitcoin wallet, I'd love to work with you. Email me at msafi@msafi.com and tell me a bit about yourself or ask me anything. And we can get started!

(Note: this is not a paid gig. The work is licensed to the public domain. If/when there's income, it will be split.)

When creating a new wallet with a BIP39 seed, Electrum gives me the option to specify a derivation path. I usually leave it at the default, m/84'/1'/0'.

As you can see, the default has hardened derivation at all levels. This tells me that the addresses that this wallet will generate will use my master private key as the root. But if I check the details of the first generated address, it shows the derivation path of that address as m/0/0. That's the first clue that Electrum didn't use the original derivation path.

Another clue is when I create a watch-only wallet with the master public key. In that case, Electrum is able to re-create my addresses, which I thought were hardened.

What's going on here? I'd like to understand.

Howdy folks,

Happy $10K!

This is another update about the Bitcoin client I'm working on, Orange. Orange is an alternative UI for Bitcoin Core. The new features I added recently are:

1. The ability to connect to a full node using custom connection configurations (like specifying server URL + port, username, password, .cookie file path)
2. Displaying live information about the mempool, and new incoming blocks

Unless a more important feature comes along, next I plan to add an issuance stats dashboard with graphs to display information about how much bitcoin is issued over specific periods, halving dates, how much bitcoin will be in circulation by a given date, etc.

Orange is available on Mac and Windows. Feel free to download it, give it a spin, ask for support, or suggest new features!

https://github.com/orange-org/orange/releases/tag/1.0.0-beta.5

Yes, it should work.

When you start Orange, the first thing it will do is look for `bitcoin.conf` in the default location. Based on `bitcoin.conf`, it will decide where to look for the .cookie file and Bitcoin Core RPC server, http://localhost:18332 (testnet), http://localhost:18443 (regtest), or http://localhost:8332 (mainnet). Then it will start communicating with the server and display the information on the UI. It shouldn't matter what network the server is using (I haven't tested using regtest though).

(I'm currently working on support for manually configuring the server URL and authentication: https://github.com/orange-org/orange/issues/19 This should be useful for users who have non-default configurations)

Good idea! I should try that.

I wanna build out Orange more and make it more compelling first though. There's still a lot more I wanna add, like make it a full wallet with Lightning support. Long way to go!

Thanks for the good suggestion though!

Orange works by making RPC calls to Bitcoin Core. It doesn't connect to any peers itself and in fact is configured to be completely isolated from making network calls (except to Bitcoin Core)

Alright folks, Orange is now available on Windows!

https://github.com/orange-org/orange/releases/tag/1.0.0-beta.3

Please go ahead and give it a try!

.NET Core is a scam. .NET Cash is the real .NET


That's exactly right. Making the Windows and Linux versions available is only a matter of figuring out the CI/CD and setting up the virtual machines on my Mac to test them.

Thanks for complimenting the design. I spent a lot of time on it because I'm not a designer or a user experience expert. Hopefully I'll find an open-source volunteer to help in that area in the future.

Hi folks,

Orange is a blockchain explorer for Bitcoin Core. It brings the functionality of a service like blockchain.com/explorer right to your desktop, powered by your own full node.

I just pushed this release last night and I’m excited for somebody to download it and try it. So go ahead and tell me what features you’d like added.

I’m planning for Orange to be more than just a blockchain explorer in the future. This is just the start.

Here’s the download link https://github.com/orange-org/orange/releases/tag/1.0.0-beta.2 (macOS only for now)

If you need help getting setup or if you have any questions, comment here, email msafi@msafi.com, tweet https://twitter.com/msafi, or file an issue https://github.com/orange-org/orange/issues/new