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Ginger Wallet

Featured on Bitcoin.org

This wallet is listed in the Bitcoin.org wallet directory. It had to pass these tests to be included.

Developer
GingerPrivacy
Released
6th June 2024
Source code
Public on github
Custody
Self-custodial: The user holds the keys

Passed all 8 tests

We check each wallet from its code to the app on your device, asking these questions in order:

Is this product the original?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Fake" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Fake".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Fake" and the following would apply:

The bigger wallets often get imitated by scammers that abuse the reputation of the product by imitating its name, logo or both.

Imitating a competitor is a huge red flag and we urge you to not put any money into this product!

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.
Can we expect the product to ever be released?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Announced but never delivered" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Announced but never delivered".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Announced but never delivered" and the following would apply:

Some products are promoted with great fund raising, marketing and ICOs, to disappear from one day to the other a week later or they are one-man side projects that get refined for months or even years to still never materialize in an actual product. Regardless, those are projects we consider “vaporware”.

Is this product available yet?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Un-Released" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Un-Released".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Un-Released" and the following would apply:

We focus on products that have the biggest impact if things go wrong and while pre-sales sometimes reach many thousands to buy into promises that never materialize, the damage is limited and there would be little definite to be said about an unreleased product anyway.

If you find a product in this category that was released meanwhile, please contact us to do a proper review!

Is it a wallet?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Not a wallet" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Not a wallet".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Not a wallet" and the following would apply:

If it’s called “wallet” but is actually only a portfolio tracker, we don’t look any deeper, assuming it is not meant to control funds. What has no funds, can’t lose your coins. It might still leak your financial history!

If you can buy Bitcoins with this app but only into another wallet, it’s not a wallet itself.

Is it for bitcoins?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "A wallet but not for Bitcoin" and the following would apply:

At this point we only look into wallets that at least also support BTC.

Is the provider ignorant of the keys?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Provided private keys" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Provided private keys".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Provided private keys" and the following would apply:

The best hardware wallet cannot guarantee that the provider deleted the keys if the private keys were put onto the device by them in the first place.

There is no way of knowing if the provider took a copy in the process. If they did, all funds controlled by those devices are potentially also under the control of the provider and could be moved out of the client’s control at any time at the provider’s discretion.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.
Is the source code publicly available?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "No source for current release found" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "No source for current release found".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "No source for current release found" and the following would apply:

A wallet that claims to not give the provider the means to steal the users’ funds might actually be lying. In the spirit of “Don’t trust - verify!” you don’t want to take the provider at his word, but trust that people hunting for fame and bug bounties could actually find flaws and back-doors in the wallet so the provider doesn’t dare to put these in.

Back-doors and flaws are frequently found in closed source products but some remain hidden for years. And even in open source security software there might be catastrophic flaws undiscovered for years.

An evil wallet provider would certainly prefer not to publish the code, as hiding it makes audits orders of magnitude harder.

For your security, you thus want the code to be available for review.

If the wallet provider doesn’t share up to date code, our analysis stops there as the wallet could steal your funds at any time, and there is no protection except the provider’s word.

“Up to date” strictly means that any instance of the product being updated without the source code being updated counts as closed source. This puts the burden on the provider to always first release the source code before releasing the product’s update. This paragraph is a clarification to our rules following a little poll.

We are not concerned about the license as long as it allows us to perform our analysis. For a security audit, it is not necessary that the provider allows others to use their code for a competing wallet. You should still prefer actual open source licenses as a competing wallet won’t use the code without giving it careful scrutiny.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.
Is the decompiled binary legible?

The answer is "yes".
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Obfuscated" and the following would apply:

The answer is "no". We marked it as "Obfuscated".

We did not ask this question because we failed at a previous question.
If the answer were "no", we would mark it as "Obfuscated" and the following would apply:

When compiling source code to binary, usually a lot of meta information is retained. A variable storing a masterseed would usually still be called masterseed, so an auditor could inspect what happens to the masterseed. Does it get sent to some server? But obfuscation would rename it for example to _t12, making it harder to find what the product is doing with the masterseed.

In benign cases, code symbols are replaced by short strings to make the binary smaller but for the sake of transparency this should not be done for non-reproducible Bitcoin wallets. (Reproducible wallets could obfuscate the binary for size improvements as the reproducibility would assure the link between code and binary.)

Especially in the public source cases, obfuscation is a red flag. If the code is public, why obfuscate it?

As obfuscation is such a red flag when looking for transparency, we do also sometimes inspect the binaries of closed source apps.

As looking for code obfuscation is a more involved task, we do not inspect many apps but if we see other red flags, we might test this to then put the product into this red-flag category.

The product cannot be independently verified. If the provider puts your funds at risk on purpose or by accident, you will probably not know about the issue before people start losing money. If the provider is more criminally inclined he might have collected all the backups of all the wallets, ready to be emptied at the press of a button. The product might have a formidable track record but out of distress or change in management turns out to be evil from some point on, with nobody outside ever knowing before it is too late.

Build Verifications

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Platform notes

Desktop wallets are all wallets that run as native apps on your Windows, Linux or Mac desktop or laptop. This category does not include products that run within the browser or an emulator.

Application information

Camera for Secure Transactions

Camera for Secure Transactions

Camera functionality in Bitcoin hardware wallets, represents a significant advancement in wallet security and data transmission. These wallets use their built-in cameras to scan QR codes, enabling a secure and efficient method for data exchange and transaction signing. The camera-based approach is integral to maintaining an air-gapped environment, meaning the wallet does not rely on potentially vulnerable USB or Bluetooth connections for communication. The process involves creating an unsigned transaction as a QR code using a compatible wallet app. This QR code is then scanned by the hardware wallet’s camera. Inside the wallet, the transaction is securely signed using the stored private key. The signed transaction is subsequently displayed as a new QR code on the wallet, which can then be scanned back by the app to broadcast it to the blockchain network. This method of using a camera for QR code scanning and transmission ensures that the private keys remain solely within the hardware wallet, significantly bolstering security against remote attacks. It also enhances privacy, as the wallet does not directly connect to the internet or other devices, thereby reducing exposure to potential vulnerabilities.

  • Enhanced security by maintaining an air-gapped environment
  • Increased privacy as the wallet does not directly connect to the internet
  • User-friendly transaction process with QR code scanning

Why we list it for this wallet

Enjoy advanced features like CoinJoin with the default coordinator, 2FA with wallet encryption, multilingual support, block filters, Tor integration, and QR code functionality.

Source: Website

App Description

Ginger wallet is a fork of

Wasabi Wallet    . It features a self-custodial BTC wallet that is source-available. It has features that allow for coinjoin, two-factor authentication, bitcoin knots integration and TOR.

This app should be for verification.

Full SegWit Support

Full SegWit Support

SegWit which is short for “Segregated Witness” was an August 2017 upgrade to the Bitcoin protocol which came with new address types.

Full SegWit Support means that the wallet can both send to and receive to all SegWit address types, including bech32 starting with “bc1…”.

  • Receiving to SegWit addresses provides fee savings, as sending these funds is possible using less base-block space. In Bitcoin, transaction fees are proportional to the transaction size in bytes.
  • Receiving to bech32 addresses provides more fee savings than P2SH Segwit addresses.
  • Sending to SegWit addresses is sometimes required in order to use more modern tools that dropped support for legacy addresses, often because of another core property of SegWit transactions: They are not malleable, meaning that the transaction ID cannot be changed “in transit” (on unconfirmed transactions).

Why we list it for this wallet

Discover the ultimate open-source, non-custodial Bitcoin wallet for desktop! Enjoy advanced features like CoinJoin with the default coordinator, 2FA with wallet encryption, multilingual support, block filters, Tor integration, and QR code functionality.

Ginger is a fork of Wasabi Wallet which is SegWit-native; block filters and address reuse discouragement imply SegWit support, but the source does not explicitly mention SegWit or bech32 addresses.

Source: Website

CoinJoin / Coin Mixing

CoinJoin / Coin Mixing

Transactions on the Bitcoin network are public and companies like Chainalysis get a very good picture of a user’s past and future spendings knowing just one transaction. Coin mixing — most commonly via CoinJoin, where multiple users collaborate to combine their transactions into one — breaks the heuristics those companies use, giving the user and those they transact with meaningful privacy. On a more fundamental level, transactional privacy is required for fungibility — the concept of all Bitcoins being equal. If transactions can be tracked and attributed to certain activity — gambling, donations to dissidents, medical expenses — users could discriminate against certain sources of payments. Some exchanges already do precisely this.

  • Privacy for you
  • Fungibility for all
  • Some services flag mixed coins as suspicious and may freeze or reject them.

Why we list it for this wallet

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.

Source: Website

TOR - The Onion Router

TOR - The Onion Router

TOR is a tool to shield the IP address of communicating parties. When communicating with a node on the TOR network, the communication is also necessarily end to end encrypted but not when communicating to a server on the internet that does neither use TOR nor ssl (https). Modern Androids allow to put apps behind a local TOR node independently of the provider offering TOR features. While this can be desirable to shield one’s IP address, it also might expose unencrypted data to different, probably more aware third parties. It also does not replace more advanced TOR features in which the wallet creates multiple TOR identities for different requests.

  • Privacy: TOR shields the client’s IP address and thus his real world location or identity from servers it talks to.
  • Speed: TOR means bouncing messages around a bit more with extra encryption. That makes it slower.

Why we list it for this wallet

All Ginger network traffic goes via Tor by default -there's no need to set up Tor by yourself. If you do already have Tor, and it is running, then Ginger will try to use that first.

Source: Website

SPV using compact block filters

SPV using compact block filters

Compact block filters as in BIP158 are relatively tiny, probabilistic representation of the full blockchain which tell the client which block contains transactions relevant to specific addresses

Compared to SPV using bloom filters:

  • Private: Avoid the leak of the client’s addresses to the full nodes it talks to. If the blocks are downloaded through TOR with new TOR identities for each request from different nodes, the privacy of this mode is almost as good as running a full node. An attacker would have to control a big part of the TOR network to still learn about which addresses are of interes.
  • Fast: No re-scan of the full chain needed when importing a wallet. Compared to using an indexing server of the provider, it leaks no data to the provider

Compared to using an indexing server it is slower and more bandwidth is needed.

Why we list it for this wallet

The software is engineered to ensure that neither the public nor the developers can compromise your privacy. This is achieved through coinjoins , client-side block filtering , and communication via the Tor anonymity network.

Source: Website

Hierarchically Deterministic

Hierarchically Deterministic

All accounts and keys are derived from one masterseed as defined in BIP 32, BIP 39, BIP 44, BIP 49, BIP 84 and BIP 86. While some wallets might use different definitions and not all support SegWit or Taproot, we only consider this feature as given if

  • the backup is a BIP 39 mnemonic
  • the funds are recoverable on a competitor’s product correctly implementing those standards
  • no address reuse
  • simple backup
  • no vendor lock-in

Why we list it for this wallet

The password you set is used as a 13th seed word (as described in BIP 39 ) and to encrypt the private key of the extended private key (as described in BIP 38 ) to get an encrypted secret which is stored on the computer.

Source: Website

Buy with Credit Card

Buy with Credit Card

Buy coins with your credit card from within the product.

Ease of use.

Buying with Credit Card usually comes with huge fees and the same exchange provider often offers a better rate when not using via a wallet integration.

Why we list it for this wallet

Buying and selling Bitcoin has never been easier with Ginger Wallet. Simply choose your amount, select your payment method, and complete your transaction in just a few steps. Whether you're buying to invest or selling to cash out, Ginger Wallet ensures a secure and seamless experience.

Source: Website

Product page updated by Daniel Andrei R. Garcia

Community Opinions

These comments are contributed by Nostr users.

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Do your own research

In addition to reading our analysis, it is important to do your own checks. Before transferring any bitcoin to your wallet, look up reviews for the wallet you want to use. They should be easy to find. If they aren't, that itself is a reason to be extra careful.

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