✅ Ginger Wallet: Enjoy seamless Coinjoin integration

[Freemind]

The history of Ginger Wallet:

We believe the most urgent issue facing humanity is fixing the monetary system, with Bitcoin being the best solution and privacy as its biggest challenge.

Ginger Wallet was created to help Bitcoin retain its cypherpunk principles on its journey to becoming a global reserve currency and to address the inherent privacy issues of its public ledger. This is why Ginger Wallet is an open-source, non-custodial, privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet for desktop that implements trustless coinjoin technology.

After years of privacy research and development, we’ve realized that having good tools is not enough—they must also be easy to use. Otherwise, they will only be utilized by a minority, making those users stand out. To encourage the adoption of these tools, Ginger is designed to be user-friendly and to provide privacy automatically by default.

Open Source:

Ginger Wallet is a free, open-source and deterministically reproducible software. Anyone can see, verify and even contribute to the code.

Non-custodial:

Not your keys, not your coins. With Ginger Wallet, you have control over your private keys, granting you true financial self-sovereignty.

Affordable:

Coinjoining coins with a value exceeding 0.01 BTC incurs a 0.3% coordinator fee + mining fees. Inputs of 0.01 BTC or less, as well as remixes, are exempt from coordinator fees, even after a single transaction. Consequently, a payment made with coinjoined funds allows both the sender and the recipient to remix their coins without incurring any coordinator fees.

   

Saturday, June 1st 2024—Effective immediately and until further notice, InvisibleBit LLC. is now blocking U.S. citizens and residents from visiting its websites, downloading and using Ginger Wallet and any related products and services, including APIs and RPC interfaces

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This thread is under construction.

[soosr]

Hey Community! Ginger dev here, feel free to ask if you have any questions about the project.

[robelneo]

Interesting and welcome to altcoinstalks it has many of the things I'm looking for in a wallet
I like that you encourage the use of a new address on every transaction and this is the first time I stumble the word Bitcoin invoice

It has been argued that the phrase "bitcoin address" was a bad name for this object because it implies it can be reused like an email address. A better name would be something like "bitcoin invoice".

I'll be following this thread for development and new updates on this new wallet.

[Freemind]

The first version of Ginger Wallet is now available for download. The different versions for operating systems are:

Windows 10+
macOS 12.0+ INTEL
macOS 12.0+ M1, M2
Ubuntu / Debian
Other Linux

Downloads are available on the official Ginger Wallet website.

An interesting article was also published a few hours ago where team members explain some of their first impressions. Ginger Wallet — first contact.

[TomPluz]

After years of privacy research and development, we’ve realized that having good tools is not enough—they must also be easy to use. Otherwise, they will only be utilized by a minority, making those users stand out. To encourage the adoption of these tools, Ginger is designed to be user-friendly and to provide privacy automatically by default.

I fully agree with this statement. There is no question that here in the world and market of cryptocurrency including Bitcoin there is that learning curve one has to go to in order to function well and not be another victim of frauds, scams and technical errors that can cost a fortune if not done right. And yes a wallet should be an ally in this case by reducing the learning curve significantly making the whole thing a lot easier and therefore user-friendly. A user-friendly platform will mean more and more people are adopting it and using it everyday...and this is going to be the biggest foundation of any wallet to succeed in this another very competitive field in the crypto industry. With the right features offered, I am hoping that Ginger will be adopting a good marketing strategy to sway others to also join us. I am suggesting an airdrop akin to what TrustWallet had done in the past which resulted into millions of people loyal to the wallet platform.

[ABCbits]

zkSNACKs doesn't run coordinator and Wasabi Wallet now require it's user to find and enter CoinJoin coordinator link manually, so this wallet could be more popular with some marketing. Anyway, does anyone know where InvisibleBit LLC. operate? I checked their legal document on https://github.com/GingerPrivacy/GingerWallet/blob/master/WalletWasabi/Legal/Assets/LegalDocumentsGingerWallet.txt which mention place called Próspera few times, but i'm not fully sure if i got it right.

[hugeblack]

After years of privacy research and development, we’ve realized that having good tools is not enough—they must also be easy to use. Otherwise, they will only be utilized by a minority, making those users stand out. To encourage the adoption of these tools, Ginger is designed to be user-friendly and to provide privacy automatically by default.

years of privacy research and development?? It is zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi fork and some parts of the code were copied and pasted as is. It is true it will work now, but what will the future development be like, especially if the development of Wasabi Wallet stops? Or what are the new coinjoin services that the developer can provide?
How will coordinated coinjoin transactions be managed/rules? how will you deal with regulations?


I would be more understanding if the service was a wasabi coordinator node




according to -----> https://github.com/GingerPrivacy/GingerWallet/releases


Default coordinator set to Ginger coordinator (cannot be changed) I assume it will be central, so there will be same blacklist rules?

[dkbit98]

Hey Community! Ginger dev here, feel free to ask if you have any questions about the project.

Welcome to altt forum.
Do you plan to offer something unique that is not available in original Wasabi wallet you forked off?
Claiming to be most secure bitcoin wallet is very bold statement and I would not say that for wasabi wallet either.

[NotATether]

Saturday, June 1st 2024—Effective immediately and until further notice, InvisibleBit LLC. is now blocking U.S. citizens and residents from visiting its websites, downloading and using Ginger Wallet and any related products and services, including APIs and RPC interfaces

.

That is not very cypherpunk-like of Ginger Wallet's company. This decision panders towards censorship.

What's the next thing that wallets and services will do? Everybody in the world except for US users should be able to benefit from coinjoin and privacy of their crypto? I am not enthusiastic about this decision at all.

[Freemind]

That is not very cypherpunk-like of Ginger Wallet's company. This decision panders towards censorship.

What's the next thing that wallets and services will do? Everybody in the world except for US users should be able to benefit from coinjoin and privacy of their crypto? I am not enthusiastic about this decision at all.

It is logical that many people do not like a decision like this, but what the team is doing by taking this measure is covering their backs against possible legal problems they may have.

I hope that in the future this measure will change and any user can use the service without restrictions. Maybe @soosr can provide more information on this topic.

[dkbit98]

That is not very cypherpunk-like of Ginger Wallet's company. This decision panders towards censorship.

I understand why they added ban for downloading part... but are they really not allowing wallet to run if user has US IP address?
Since wasabi and ginger wallet all network traffic goes via Tor by default, I don't understand how they can do this in real life.
Maybe this is just posted more as a cosmetic protection from authorities.

[soosr]

zkSNACKs doesn't run coordinator and Wasabi Wallet now require it's user to find and enter CoinJoin coordinator link manually, so this wallet could be more popular with some marketing. Anyway, does anyone know where InvisibleBit LLC. operate? I checked their legal document on which mention place called Próspera few times, but i'm not fully sure if i got it right.

You got it right, it Próspera.

years of privacy research and development?? It is zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi fork and some parts of the code were copied and pasted as is. It is true it will work now, but what will the future development be like, especially if the development of Wasabi Wallet stops? Or what are the new coinjoin services that the developer can provide?
How will coordinated coinjoin transactions be managed/rules? how will you deal with regulations?

There was no copy-pasting, it was purely a fork plus minor changes (rebranding, coordinator URI). In the first period, Ginger's team will be focusing on marking to spread the news.
FTR the development of Wasabi Wallet didn't stop, it will be continued as an open source project, so anyone can continue. Their direction indeed changed. Since zkSANCKs coordinator stopped operating, they now want to make Wasabi Wallet to be able to connect to any other coordinator. It turned out that currently, the client (Wasabi) is not fully secure against malicious coordinators so their last release tried to mitigate this issue.

Ginger is different in this aspect, it meant to work 100% well with only Ginger's coordinator (the same way as Wasabi worked with zkSNACK's coordinator).
And it will be maintained by former Wasabi devs. e.g. Formet CTO, Head of UI, Head of Communications joined Ginger)

Regarding the regulations, Ginger aims to not let US citizens use their software/service as much as they can. Moreover learning from Samurai's and Tornado Cash's cases we stay on the same route as zkSANCK was in terms of filtering who can use the coinjoin service.
Ginger's is the only coordinator that restricts who can use their service, so it is most secure for the users if they don't want their bitcoins to be in the same transaction with illicit bitcoins.

The problem with the market now is several coinjoin coordinators appeared without any restriction, which means criminals can wash their funds clean without any question and those users who are also using those coordinators will mix their funds with those criminals, thus it can happen that their bitcoins will be marked as risky and won't be accepted later on exchanges and so.

Do you plan to offer something unique that is not available in original Wasabi wallet you forked off?

As I answered just now, the direction of the two software changed. As of now the uniqueness that Ginger can provide is it aims not to let criminals use their service so your bitcoins won't be mixed with illicit actor's bitcoins.
In the first period, we will be focusing on marketing and later will decide internally on new features.

That is not very cypherpunk-like of Ginger Wallet's company. This decision panders towards censorship.

What's the next thing that wallets and services will do? Everybody in the world except for US users should be able to benefit from coinjoin and privacy of their crypto? I am not enthusiastic about this decision at all.

Currently, due to Samurai Wallet's case, there is uncertainty about what coinjoin is considered in the US. Until it is settled we had to censor US citizens.
The only way to provide anonymity for the user is the censorship. Otherwise, illicit actors are going to use your service and the governments and international policies will stop it and get you in jail.

[Mr. Magkaisa]

Hey Community! Ginger dev here, feel free to ask if you have any questions about the project.

       -   Welcome to this forum, Dev. I'm glad you share a wallet that can benefit most people who will trust what you've done. It's like Electrum, which is exclusive to Bitcoin and no other cryptocurrency is available. Hopefully, you will continue to update us here so we can see future innovation in this wallet.

I will also try to download it to my desktop and try to hide bitcoin little by little through DCA. I hope that it is second to the electrum that is often used by those who trust it.

[dkbit98]

The problem with the market now is several coinjoin coordinators appeared without any restriction

That is not a problem, that is called freedom of not always kissing asses of regulators all the time.
If you don't want to use stuff that criminals use than you should stop using US dollars and all other stuff.
I see that your software is actually focusing on restrictions and censorship, and I wouldn't be surprised if you restrict use of other coordinators soon 

[NotATether]

It is logical that many people do not like a decision like this, but what the team is doing by taking this measure is covering their backs against possible legal problems they may have.

What is even the point of an anonymity service if certain people are not allowed to use it?

Coin un-tainting service, that people from certain countries (IP addresses) cannot join?

I mean, this probably coordinates transactions from North Korea, and Russia (as it should be) but the developers scare themselves into keeping out transactions from the USA.

Then what will happen when other countries like the EU pass a similar measure? These wallets are going to regulate themselves out of existence.

1 BTC = 1 BTC. It does not matter where you are from.

I understand the position of these developers but Congress is not in a hurry to clarify coinjoins anytime soon and this is playing into their hands.