Samourai Wallet Review : Bitcoin Wallet 5 Pros And Cons

What is a Samourai wallet?

Samourai wallet is a FOSS, abbreviation for free and open-source, non-custodial bitcoin wallet software. Samourai wallet is designed to provide users top-notch privacy when interacting with the bitcoin network. Furthermore, they have more control over their private keys.

The nature of FOSS gives the Samourai wallet user complete autonomy to run, host, and build without the help of the Samourai independent software team. It is published under the GNU General Public License 3.0.

 

Is Samourai Wallet safe?

Samourai Wallet is privacy technology for bitcoin, just as curtains are for windows. It accentuates transactional privacy; multiple options/tools that accompany each other for greater blockchain privacy are available to users.

Samourai Wallet does not extract any PII (Personally Identifiable Information) such as Names, Email Addresses, or Phone Numbers. It is easy to use and less cumbersome to use this software. Although it is a mobile wallet, Samourai is secured with high-end military-grade encryption. It protects their user’s wallet data from malware and server attacks using an advanced AES-256 encryption method.

Check out other wallets that are safe too

  1. Metamask Wallet
  2. MyEtherWallet
  3. MyCrypto Wallet
  4. Gatehub Wallet
  5. BreadWallet

 

Is Samourai Wallet Anonymous?

Samourai Wallet is the epitome of Wallet anonymity. The Samourai Wallet team has a strong commitment to anonymity and privacy due to being an anonymous group of privacy advocates themselves. Samourai wallet users can remain completely anonymous and implement added layers of privacy protection when transacting Bitcoin.

 

Samourai Wallet Reviews

Usually, articles on the internet focus only on the abstract issues regarding the wallet and are quite objective. However, by using only a few sources, they create inductive fallacies, aka building repertoire on small sample size. We are going to take a different approach by citing customer reviews on the wallet.

Starting off with a Redditor review on Samourai wallet who downloaded the Samourai wallet APK from a random site. He found the UI amazing and the usage quite easy. However, by downloading the Samourai wallet APK from a random site, he was at an increased risk of getting an infectious piece of software. He also elaborated that some of the community members who did not download Samourai’s wallet from the play store were robbed of their bitcoins. We urge users not to download software from shady websites and stick to the play store version. However, the Reddit community is overall happy with its performance.

Many of its users are happy with its user interface and security, these individuals are the experts in their fields, and the general populace has a different say. Customers on revain.org cite its cryptocurrency as only being limited to bitcoins and the support team inactive most of the time. Furthermore, it is not compatible with IOS, thus iPhone users will not be able to access this app. Apart from that, a few buck issues also have an effect on the whole product, while on its user puts it simply “Too much anonymity is dangerous”.

Samourai Wallet Supported Coins

Samourai Wallet only supports Bitcoins.

 

Ease of Use

Samourai Wallet is quite easy to use if you are a veteran in the field of cryptocurrency. A beginner should get a hold of the wallet ins and outs. The User interface is quite flashy and nice for such a libre software. Apart from that, the setup guide is particularly easy, which would take at most 10 minutes.

 

Security

Though it is quite secure, as it should be, however, the wallet has some shortcomings. As of yet, no two-factor authentication is present, which is a must for financial transactions and websites. They are currently working to resolve other minor issues.

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How can I add Bitcoin to the Samourai wallet?

You cannot buy bitcoin using the Samourai Wallet software, and can only be stored in it.

Bitcoin address

Your Samourai Wallet contains an infinite amount of bitcoin addresses that get used once and then are archived. To get your latest bitcoin address press the blue + button on the bottom right of the main balance and transactions screen. Then press the green Receive button to open the Receive screen.

 

Scan Or Share Your Address

Samourai Wallet will display a QR code of your latest bitcoin address. Above the QR code is the actual address text. You can scan this QR code with any other bitcoin wallet or you share the QR code or address manually by tapping the text of the address.

 

Send From Your Other Wallet

With your other wallet or service either scan the QR code on the Receive screen or paste the address. It is recommended to deposit at least 0.001 BTC to unlock the full potential of the wallet.

If you receive an error when trying to send to the address generated by Samourai Wallet, press the button and change the Address Type to segwit compatibility

 

Sending Bitcoin

If you have a QR code of the recipient’s bitcoin address, the quickest way to send is to tap in the toolbar. This will activate the camera and scanner. Focus the camera on the QR code until it successfully scans.

 

Send Screen

To get to the Send Screen without activating the Quick Scan camera simply tap the blue + button on the bottom right of the main balance and transactions screen. Then, press the red send button. This will open the Send Screen.

On the send screen, you can activate the QR scanner by pressing in the toolbar. You can also manually paste any bitcoin address into the To field.

Once a valid address and send amount are entered in, the Review Transaction button at the bottom will no longer be grey and will become blue. Tap it to continue to the preview screen.

 

Review & Send Transaction

Double-check that the bitcoin address and amount are correct.

Use the fee slider to increase or decrease the transaction priority. The lower the priority, the longer it will take for the transaction to confirm. Increase the fee for more urgent transactions that need to be confirmed quickly.

Underneath the fee slider, there will be a green SEND button across the bottom of your screen. Tap it to continue.

You will be asked to confirm the details of your send one last time. Take a moment to review those details before sending them. Press OK to broadcast your transaction to the bitcoin network, and then wait for your transaction to confirm.

 

How do I get an anonymous Bitcoin wallet?

It is solely an android app, thus, if you have a smartphone that uses android, you can download it via Google play store.

What Is Samourai Whirlpool?

Samourai Whirlpool is a free and open-source (FOSS), non-custodial, chaumian CoinJoin platform. Its goal is to mathematically disassociate the ownership of inputs to outputs in a given bitcoin transaction. This is to increase the privacy of the users involved, protect against financial surveillance, and increase the fungibility of the Bitcoin network as a whole.

CoinJoin is a process of creating a multi-party bitcoin transaction where all parties to the transaction put in and get out the same amount of bitcoin, but the addresses are mixed in the transaction making the origin of the coins difficult to trace

 

Standalone GUI

  • This requires OpenJDK 8+ to be installed on the machine.
  • You’re only mixing when the application is open and active if your computer sleeps, you’re not mixing.
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Standalone CLI

  • Designed for always-on devices (ex. Pi4/Odroid N2 or computer).
  • 24/7 mixing as long as the device is on and Whirlpool is active.
  • Low resource usage.
  • This requires OpenJDK 8+ to be installed on the machine.
  • Command-line only.

 

Remote CLI backed GUI.

  • Connect the GUI to your remote CLI.
  • 24/7 mixing.
  • GUI machine doesn’t require OpenJDK.

 

Mobile Mixing

  • Mix while on the go!
  • Only mixing when whirlpool service is open, phone OS can kill background service.

 

Samourai Wallet Fees

Free. The Samourai wallet is free to download and use. Users do not have to pay any transaction fees to Samourai for storing it. However, users must pay a minuscule capital to Samourai on outgoing transactions. This small fee is in addition to the mining fee, which the user can customize. Also, if the user wishes to utilize some of the additional privacy transaction features, there is a small cost. For instance, to open up a private payment channel between two wallets, there is a one-time cost of 0.00015 BTC plus the miner fee. Furthermore, to use the ricochet feature, Samourai charges 0.002 BTC for every 4 hop ricochet transaction.

 

Samourai Wallet Login Process

The login process is quite simple. You create an account via the mobile application. The account formation is quite simple for a novice user.

 

Samourai Wallet Android APK

The Samourai Wallet apk has a few top-notch features that been elaborated below:

– Full Segwit Support for the most efficient transactions and lowest miner fees

– You control your private keys on your device. They are never communicated with any server

– Best in class dynamic miner fee estimation and custom fee settings

– STONEWALL for increasing the privacy of your transactions

– Ricochet spend for mitigation against address clustering attacks

– Send and receive Stealth Payments directly into your wallet with PayNym (BIP47)

– Deterministic sorting of input/outputs to prevent the wallet from leaving a discernible blockchain fingerprint (BIP69)

– Bump a stuck transaction with full Replace By Fee (RBF) and Child Pays for Parent (CPFP) support

– Route outgoing transactions via your own trusted node

– No addresses are reused to help manage metadata leakage

– Standard import/export functionality. Compatible with any other BIP44/BIP49/BIP84 wallet.

– Stealth mode hides the wallet on the device. Dial a secret code to access your wallet.

– Enable remote SMS commands to regain access to your funds if you lose your phone

– Block Explorer support for all popular services

– Passphrase protection by default (BIP39)

– Fully encrypted client-side and offline

– Connect via your preferred VPN

– Connect via Tor (Socks5 proxy)

 

Samourai Wallet iOS iPhone

Unfortunately, it is not available for IOS, so Samourai wallet IOS iPhone users should opt for other compatible wallets.

 

Samourai Wallet Funds Frozen – What to Do Now?

In the unfortunate event of frozen funds or samourai wallet amount not changing, the best option is to contact customer support. Generally, this is a rare occurrence, as such bugs have been fixed, though a much safe option is to keep your bitcoins in a hard wallet.

 

How to Connect Samourai Wallet Ledger Together?

Bitcoin Stick Opendime is a hard wallet which can only store bitcoin and is supported by Samourai Wallet. The Bitcoin Stick Opendime is sold through its own web shop where you can pay with cryptocurrencies or credit card. No Samourai Wallet ledger support for Nano S or X was found. Apart from that, Brooklyn-based goTenna has launched TxTenna, a mobile app that allows users to send bitcoin without an internet connection. Built in partnership with Samourai Wallet, the mobile app will enable users to send bitcoin using a secure and private network free of censorship.

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Can Samourai Wallet Hold Ethereum?

No, Samourai wallet can only hold one type of cryptocurrency and that is bitcoin.

 

How to Recover Samourai Wallet?

To recover Samourai Wallet; Once Samourai is installed onto your device, launch the application. If there is an existing backup on the device, it will automatically be detected, and an option to restore it will be displayed on the bottom of the screen. Simply tap RESTORE, then input the wallet passphrase that you chose when you created the wallet.

If there is no existing backup on the device, you can still restore using the secret words.

If the backup is stored in another area of the device or externally, tap the three vertical dots in the top right corner and select Import Samourai backup. There will then be the option to “CHOOSE FILE” or “PASTE” depending on the location of the backup.

 

Step 1 – Enter passphrase

Enter the passphrase of the wallet you want to restore.

Step 2 – Enter PIN

If the wallet is decrypted successfully, then you will be asked to enter the existing PIN code of the wallet which you had created previously.

If you received an error instead of the PIN screen, please check your passphrase and try again. The passphrase must be exact and may include white space and special characters.

Step 3 – Wallet Restored

Your wallet should be fully restored with the expected balance, transaction history, payment codes, and all of the settings retained.

 

Samourai Wallet Social Media Handles

The Samourai wallet Twitter handle is quite active, thus expect a good and quick response. The Samourai wallet Twitter handles posts changes to its apps and articles that can prove useful.

Apart from that, a blog is solely dedicated to Samourai’s wallet. If you want to look into the working and usage of the platform, then do check it out. A Facebook account also exists, though the community is not as vibrant as the Twitter one.

 

Takeaway

The Samourai Wallet is an excellent cryptocurrency storage software for android users. It is a bit complex for novice cryptocurrency learners. It is only catered for Bitcoin and does not support other cryptocurrencies. However, if you need greater anonymity and high-end security, Samourai Wallet is a lead contender for the spot. Though it cannot be used as an exchange to trade bitcoins and is not as secure as a hard wallet, it has more to give for its shortcomings.