Thank you, happy to be here!

Fantastic work! Love to see advancements in privacy preserving tools 👏

Sorry, I missed that it's available as an executable. A mistake on my side.

Yes, I've experimented a fair bit with Core. I wouldn't agree it's easier. For example, Umbrel requires flashing a file on an SD card and plugging it in. And when it's set up, you have access to an easy-to-use UI (yes, I know Core has a UI available, but it's not as easy to use). RoninDojo and The Bitcoin Machine are available fully set up straight out of the box if that's desired. Sure, that's not ideal from a security standpoint, but still fine for exploration, in my opinion.

Core requires a level of familiarity with the command line—which I personally have as a programmer—but I know a lot of people don't. Installing dependencies, building from source, etc, is not something everyone knows how to do.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts @BITC0IN 👍

While I agree that the security model is tighter running, let's say, Bitcoin Core, I'd argue that we should be careful to not make perfect the enemy of the good and gatekeep less technically experienced people. There will always exist trade-offs in complexity vs. security, in the same way that it does for various forms of custody. It wouldn't make sense to suggest multi-sig hardware wallets to new Bitcoiners even though it is, no doubt, technically more secure.

Running and maintaining a bare-metal node with Bitcoin Core is harder and out of reach for a lot of people. I do think it's a net positive for the Bitcoin network and the individuals involved to experiment and get involved with something more accessible, such as Umbrel, RaspiBlitz, myNode, RoninDojo. These projects are also open-source and the code can be inspected—and is so by many people.

But I'm curious to learn more about the risks you see associated with the aforementioned projects. Have you written something more in-depth where you expound on the risks? Please, share if so, I would love to understand it better.

Well put, that's precisely my experience as well.

Thank you! I'm glad to have found this lovely community.

Thank you!