Questions tagged [thin-clients]
Bitcoin clients that perform a reduced amount of processing or need a reduced amount of data compared with the Bitcoin Core client.
61
questions
15
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3
answers
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Copy wallet to Electrum or Multibit?
Is there a way to import my wallet from Bitcoin.org's client into the much lighter Multibit or Electrum? The disk space & bandwidth consumption (not exactly well presented to a beginner) quickly ...
14
votes
2
answers
7k
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What is a thin client?
I've heard that if you don't want do download gigabytes of data just to use bitcoin you gotta use a thin client. But what is a thin client?
What are the main advantages of a thin bitcoin client and ...
14
votes
2
answers
10k
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Are the Thin clients Electrum and Multibit safe and secure?
How do Electrum and Multibit compare for being safe and secure. Both are open source. Are there any advantages, security wise, to use one or the other?
I'm new to bitcoin and the only reason for ...
11
votes
2
answers
7k
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Multibit vs Electrum - which is more mature and secure? [duplicate]
I'm having a hard time finding objective reviews / comparisons of these two 'lite' clients. Can someone who tried them both give some comments?
Thanks
11
votes
2
answers
10k
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How to backup Android Wallet?
I'm finally getting ready to install an Android client.
I believe Android Wallet is the most popular one.
How do I back up the bitcoins stored on it?
Also, is there a thin native Android client ...
10
votes
2
answers
2k
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How secure are various models of Bitcoin clients?
As there was some disagreement on security of various models of Bitcoin clients in comments to this answer, I'd like to address the problem.
How secure are various models of Bitcoin clients? Those ...
9
votes
3
answers
590
views
How popular are alternative clients?
Is there any data available on how many people use an alternative client in contrast to the Satoshi client? Alternatively, is there any data on how many times such clients have been downloaded?
7
votes
2
answers
1k
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Is Electrum's SPV (thin-client) implementation not P2P (as opposed to Multibit's)?
As far as I know, when I use Electrum I'm just choosing servers to trust that hold the blockchain.
But in this recently published article I read this about Multibit:
It uses a slightly weaker ...
6
votes
1
answer
839
views
Can I run p2pool with a thin bitcoin client?
Everytime I restart my mining machine due to heat, I have to wait the following sequence to mine at p2pool:
bitcoind -> download blockchain & rescan -> p2pool -> download shares -> ...
6
votes
1
answer
4k
views
What is "the gap limit" in Electrum?
I don't understand this explaination.
6
votes
2
answers
296
views
Can a full node provide a bogus block bloomfilter to a Neutrino node?
When a thin client using BIP157/BIP158 (Neutrino) requests the block filter for the latest block, would it be possible for the full node serving this request to attack the Neutrino node by providing a ...
6
votes
1
answer
794
views
Do thin clients leak which addresses you own?
According to this, thin clients use bloom filters to request "addresses and transactions they are interested in to the peer". And according to this, bloom filters are used to help prevent the SPV ...
6
votes
1
answer
758
views
How do I generate offline transactions in Java?
I'd like to develop a Java binding to the Stratum Overlay Network (a server for thin clients). This requires signing on offline transactions.
Can I directly use bitcoinj's API to do this? Can I copy-...
5
votes
1
answer
779
views
Lightning network and lightweight clients
How will the lightning network handle lightweight clients?
Do I understand it correctly that opening a payment channel require writing on the blockchain to protect against double-spend? The integrity ...
5
votes
2
answers
120
views
Correlation of number of (non mining) full nodes to internet bandwidth
Are there any correlation studies showing the number of (non mining) full nodes per country (total or per/capita) compared to average internet connection speeds?
I know there are great differences ...
5
votes
1
answer
317
views
Are there live BitcoinJS Exit Nodes?
Where can I find some live (trusted?) BitcoinJS Exit Nodes?
I'm looking it it from the client perspective - I want to write a Java app that doesn't store a blockchain. I don't want to setup an exit ...
5
votes
2
answers
5k
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Why can the same 12 words produce different seeds in an Electrum wallet file?
I was looking through an Electrum wallet file (from Electrum 1.9.6 for Windows if it matters) trying to understand what information was contained in it, and I couldn't initially figure out exactly ...
4
votes
4
answers
8k
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What's the best Android wallet client for bitcoin?
There are many bitcoin wallet clients on android market. What is the best considering security, interoperability and usability?
4
votes
4
answers
24k
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Why can't I spend my bitcoins when they have been fully confirmed?
I've used bitcoins for quite a while, but about a year ago I decided to dump having a thin client on my machine, and I've just kept my coins in various exchanges.
Yesterday, however, I wanted to ...
4
votes
1
answer
202
views
What client-side checks does blockchain's android client do?
Blockchain just came out with a great Android client, based on bitcoin-wallet.
In the description it says "No blockchain downlaod [sic.]". However, in the documentation of their sources, they say "...
4
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Thin client list
Is there a trusted thin client list somewhere?
I searched one for OSX and one for Android and I found next to nothing. That is: nothing at all for OSX, and only a source-only on github for Android (...
4
votes
2
answers
919
views
Accepting Bitcoin payments without the full blockchain or third party APIs?
I want to make a basic program/script that utilizes Bitcoin payments, but I don't have the storage space to sync with the entire blockchain, and I don't want to be dependent on a third-party API like ...
4
votes
1
answer
255
views
Lightweight client, bare necessities
What are the bare data necessities that a lightweight client would have to get from a server client in order to perform basic wallet tasks (show balance, transaction history, number of confirmations, ...
3
votes
2
answers
2k
views
is it possible to decode block height from a blockhash?
I'm creating a bitcoin network client and I'm wondering if it's possible to decode the block height from a blockhash whenever I receive a new block inventory vector.
3
votes
4
answers
2k
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Electrum 2.0: non-BIP39/32 standardisation complicates matters immensely. Why?
Electrum 2.0 has been causing me some frustration, insofar as it seems to be a non-standard implementation of BIP32/BIP39 (HD wallets, mnemonic seed, respectively). The wallet in question is a 2of2 ...
3
votes
1
answer
266
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How do light clients using compact block filters get relevant unconfirmed transactions?
I was discussing various light client models and we got into unconfirmed transactions. With the BIP37-based bloom filters, a light client would subscribe to updates from full node peers by submitting ...
3
votes
2
answers
3k
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Is there a wallet like Multibit for Litecoin?
Is there a lightweight client like Multibit available for Litecoin? If not, is one in development?
3
votes
1
answer
640
views
Do full nodes store the complete merkle tree or do they regenerate it when creating a merkle proof?
I understand what the merkle root is for. And I understand that blocks don't store the merkle tree.
Question 1) Is there any place that the complete merkle trees get stored? I don't mean the merkle ...
3
votes
2
answers
525
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Who gives SPV nodes merkle path to do validation for small subset of transaction?
From Mastering bitcoin:
Merkle trees are used extensively by SPV nodes. SPV nodes don’t have all transactions and do not download full blocks, just block headers. In order to verify that a transaction ...
3
votes
1
answer
324
views
What hardware requirements does a SPV client have?
I read about SPVs here that:
[A SPV] client downloads a complete copy of the headers for all blocks in
the entire block chain. This means that the download and storage
requirements scale linearly ...
3
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Thin command line-capable client for Linux
I need to set up linux server for web service that could generate bitcoin addresses and check the balance on them, etc (basically, receive payments in BTC). And I do not want to use third-party online ...
3
votes
1
answer
230
views
In bitcoinj, why is MemoryBlockStore not used by default?
My understanding of bitcoinj is that it is used to implement a "thin client" that doesn't store the entire blockchain- just the headers.
When I use the WalletAppKit, it creates a file "default....
3
votes
0
answers
182
views
Electrum via command-line: can generic blockchain info be requested?
For example can I ask the Electrum client via it's API what the height or version of the latest block is? Looking through the docs all I currently see is wallet commands.
2
votes
1
answer
478
views
Are lightweight LN wallets vulnerable to transaction withholding?
As far as I know, LN requires the user to watch the blockchain in order to perform penalty in time. However, running full node is probably a heavy burden to some users, especially to mobile phones. I ...
2
votes
2
answers
463
views
c-lightning & Lightweight nodes (no local bitcoind)
I am trying to take advantage of the new release of c-lightning 0.6 that provide the ability to setup a lightweight node (i.e. No Local bitcoind instance running). But did not found any documentation ...
2
votes
2
answers
696
views
Options for a Client Only C# application
If I want to create a client only, C# desktop application, what are my options for working with Bitcoin?
I could try to port BitcoinJ, which seems like a lot of overhead in terms of initial effort ...
2
votes
1
answer
73
views
How many lightweight nodes vs full nodes are there on the network?
I'm curious, how many lightweight nodes are there on the network? Is this easy to tell?
2
votes
1
answer
363
views
How a thin node ensures the validity of blockchain?
How a thin node in network verify the validity of the blockchain tree? I think the node must wait for a time period to get the same valid block from some of its peers.
2
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Is there a mobile wallet that works with a Trezor?
Is there a mobile wallet that support using a Trezor hardware wallet to spend coins? Is there an online resource that tracks features like this for thin-clients?
2
votes
1
answer
152
views
How does MultiBit figure out balance of an imported address? [duplicate]
MultiBit is a Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) client that uses the merkle root of block headers to validate transactions. I'm wondering however, when an address (private key) is imported into ...
2
votes
1
answer
189
views
Wallet for btc bot
Which bitcoin wallet should I use to manipulate it programmatically?
I don't want to use heavy bitcoin-core. But as I understand there are different kinds of bitcoin's thin clients: some outsource ...
2
votes
1
answer
531
views
What service does Multibit connect to? [duplicate]
Multibit is clearly a faster desktop wallet since it's a thin client that doesn't download and process the entire *8GB blockchain.
My question is, what service does Multibit connect to in order to ...
2
votes
0
answers
105
views
Running TorBB on host machine while running Whonix VM setup as guest on the same physical box
I've currently set up Whonix VMs using Virtual Box on OS X 10.11.6. Before that I was using a Bitcoin-qt with Tor Browser Bundle.
Now I'm having question what is a best way to use bitcoin+tor setup ...
1
vote
2
answers
93
views
Why does a thin node need to know if a transaction is present in specific block's merkle tree?
I understand what a merkle root is and how merkle proofs work.
It's all about thin nodes checking whether a specific transaction ID is in a specific block. So, thin node says: I have a transaction ID -...
1
vote
1
answer
336
views
Lightning node on a Bitcoin SPV
is there a way to run a Lightning node on a Bitcoin SPV node at the moment? I've read that both lnd and c-lightning need a Bitcoin Fullnode at this time.
This might seem ignorant but i don't want to ...
1
vote
3
answers
248
views
Does a thin client testnet wallet exist which allows offline signing?
I appreciate I can do offline singing with bitcoin-core, but it's complex. To make it easier, I would have to download the entire blockchain.
I have searched up electrum, but can't seem to find a ...
1
vote
1
answer
125
views
thin-client remote node lying through omission
is there a way for a non-full node (ie a node which does not contain the full blockchain) to know when it has received all transactions associated with an address? i understand that it is possible for ...
1
vote
1
answer
88
views
Is it possible to create a thin client that only listens for transactions and pending transactions?
I looked into using a thin client but even thin clients implement SPV (Simple Payment Verification). What if you just wanted a client that only listens for transactions/pending transactions, doesn't ...
1
vote
1
answer
101
views
Which Bitcoin thin client that can execute on restricted IoT devices?
I am trying to find a suitable Bitcoin thin client for IoT devices with Linux OSs. IoT devices will act as peers as thin clients, and the selection criteria for the thin client is least CPU, memory ...
1
vote
1
answer
407
views
How long does it take for a SPV to intermittently sync (order of magnitude)?
Say I have a device that is mostly offline, with a SPV on it.
Say once in a while (for instance once a week) I go online for about 20 minutes, and make a large number of transactions (which are ...