Preparing for war — how was 2019 and a glimpse of the future
By: Igor Korsakov
Tags: Bluewallet, Bitcoin Wallet, Bitcoin, Lightning Network

Preparing for war — how was 2019 and a glimpse of the future

2019 was a great year for BlueWallet. Although it is a new wallet and still in its infancy, we did get some some media coverage, we did get some recognition from industry experts and we did get some users to remind us how much we suck and how much better it can still be. All that, working on the project on our free time in a pure open source fashion.

This year blew away our wildest expectations on what we thought we could achieve. To give you a bit of perspective, at this time last year we were releasing the android version of the app and our Lightning wallets feature right before Christmas. And probably, at that time, most of you hadn’t really heard about Blue.

Talking about Lightning. While the Lightning Network slowly matures, and after doing our part to put it on the spotlight and bringing the attention it actually deserved. We decided to take a step back and work on the layer that really matters. The base layer.

In the core, BlueWallet is (and always was) a non-custodial on-chain bitcoin wallet, born out of the frustration and ashes of the 2017 Bull market. When fees were high and the majority of wallets still had not implemented segwit and flexible fees. Paying $20 in fees for a transaction because your wallet’s fee estimation was broken? That was a real deal back then.

The very first release of BlueWallet fixed exactly that: segwit, flexible fees (starting from 1 sat/byte), and RBF (replace-by-fee).

During the next cycle of adoption (this is how I like to call the bull-run) I expect to see exactly the same thing we saw in 2017: with that many people discovering the advantages of Bitcoin and making their first happy transactions. The block space will again be an extremely scarce commodity.

After another block reward halving, a more mature fee market will develop, and we will witness a natural competition for block space. This is why I think it is important to prepare for that in advance: your bitcoin wallet app (as a customer-facing software) should be the one to act in your best interests, trying to save as much pennies on transactions as possible and, at the same time, give you the full control you need and should have.

In preparation for that, at BlueWallet we implemented:

CPFP — Bump transaction (child-pays-for-parent) — a technique that allows you to spend incoming transaction that is unconfirmed by sending it to your another address, but with the total fees higher than the original transaction. This helps if it takes forever for your incoming transaction to confirm on the blockchain.

(child-pays-for-parent) — a technique that allows you to spend incoming transaction that is unconfirmed by sending it to your another address, but with the total fees higher than the original transaction. This helps if it takes forever for your incoming transaction to confirm on the blockchain. RBF — Bump transaction (replace-by-fee) — if you sent a transaction and it’s still unconfirmed you can replace it with the one with higher fees, making it more attractive for miners to mine, thus, speeding up the confirmation.

(replace-by-fee) — if you sent a transaction and it’s still unconfirmed you can replace it with the one with higher fees, making it more attractive for miners to mine, thus, speeding up the confirmation. RBF — Cancel transaction — a technique similar to regular RBF, but where the replacement transaction’s output is the address you control, thus, paying yourself, effectively cancelling the transaction.

— a technique similar to regular RBF, but where the replacement transaction’s output is the address you control, thus, paying yourself, effectively cancelling the transaction. Batch send — when creating a transaction add as many payees as you want. This helps to save on fees when having to pay multiple destinations. Making a nice UI/UX on this one was a challenge.

— when creating a transaction add as many payees as you want. This helps to save on fees when having to pay multiple destinations. Making a nice UI/UX on this one was a challenge. Flexible fees (starting from 1 sat per byte) and fee recommendations fetched from a real up-to-date bitcoin node.

(starting from 1 sat per byte) and fee recommendations fetched from a real up-to-date bitcoin node. Finally, from now on, we are promoting BIP84 Native SegWit wallets as the default wallet when users create a new wallet. We were warned and actually advised against that, as that triggers a stream of complaints from users who can’t withdraw coins from exchanges because exchanges still don’t recognize ‘bc1……’ addresses. But it’s time. Really. Users should take their complaints to obsolete exchanges. Native segwit will allow saving on fees even more.

I like to repeat that BlueWallet is preparing for war, and this war will be for block space. Once another billion of Earth inhabitants realize the benefits of hard, censorship-resistant and non-confiscatable money.

If this is the kind of fight you want to be part of, protecting the Bitcoin user interests over miners and corporate players, you know where to go. And you are much welcomed!