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Thomas Voegtlin: Electrum, SPV Wallets and Bitcoin Aliases

Episode Summary

Powering an estimated 5-10% of all Bitcoin transactions, Electrum is one of the leaders of the Bitcoin wallet space. The open-source walled was started in 2011 and played a key role in the development of the light-weight SPV wallets. Developer Thomas Voegtlin joined us for a discussion of Electrum, their recent 2.0 release and the rapidly evolving Bitcoin wallet space in general.

Episode Notes

Powering an estimated 5-10% of all Bitcoin transactions, Electrum is one of the leaders of the Bitcoin wallet space. The open-source walled was started in 2011 and played a key role in the development of the light-weight SPV wallets. Developer Thomas Voegtlin joined us for a discussion of Electrum, their recent 2.0 release and the rapidly evolving Bitcoin wallet space in general.

Topics covered in this episode:

• The evolution of Bitcoin wallets and what motivated him to start Electrum
• Electrum 2.0 and its new features such as Multi-sig and hardware wallet support
• The security tradeoffs between using an SPV wallet versus a full node client
• How Bitcoin aliases could do away with Bitcoin addresses

Episode links:

• Electrum
• Electrum Github Repo
• On the Privacy Provisions of Bloom Filters in Lightweight Bitcoin Clients
• BIP 39
• BIP 37
• Versum MIT paper

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/069