What is Ashigaru?
A self custodial, open source and secure Bitcoin wallet that is private by design.
The Ashigaru Open Source Project was established in the months after the United States Department of Justice brought charges against the founders of the self custodial Bitcoin application, Samourai Wallet. At the time of arrest, multiple servers that hosted documentation, code repositories and message coordination services were either seized or failed to remain online, presumably due to being no longer administered. With the indicted individuals placed under restrictive conditions on bail, it became clear that all software development had ceased.
Aims and Goals
We believe anyone should be able to engage in peaceful, voluntary and private commerce on the internet without tracking, surveillance or censorship. The Ashigaru Open Source Project develops, releases and maintains free and open source software that makes extensive use of both published code from active projects as well as those archived in the public domain.
Open, unrestricted communication networks are utilized to ensure continued availability. The software released by the project will always have a low barrier to entry, be non discriminatory, never expose users to counterparty risk and provide as much protection as possible for those transacting on a public blockchain.
What’s in a name?
As former users of Samourai Wallet, yet having no association or relationship with the core team, “Ashigaru” was chosen to represent individuals of humble origin whom, borne out of necessity, would equip themselves with their own tools and rise to the occasion during a period of great change.
Here is the ONLY podcast episode with the developers of this wallet.
Here are a list of features directly from their website:
- Onion Routing: Connect to your Dojo node and broadcast over the Tor network
- Ricochet: Add distance to the origins of your transactions to mitigate surveillance
- Encrypted Key Recovery: Standards based mnemonic secured with a passphrase that can be imported to other wallets
- Post Mix Spending: Import your Samourai Wallet private keys and maintain your segregated accounts
- Batch Spending: Save on fees by composing a single transaction to multiple recipients
- Stealth Mode: Obscure the wallet from physical searches with a functional decoy application in the launcher
- Peer to Peer Coinjoins: Undermine heuristics used by blockchain observers through collaboration with other users
- Coin Control: Select, label, freeze and unfreeze unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) in your wallet
- Smart Mining Fees: An advanced algorithm for determining a rate from unconfirmed transactions in the mempool
- Free and Open Source: Ashigaru is released under the FOSS license GNU General Public License Version 3
FREESAMOURAI
Maybe you've been living in a hole, but the developers of the Samourai Wallet were indicted and picked up by the US government (even the one in Portugal, because, shocker, the US DoJ can get you almost anywhere in the world except Cuba, North Korea, Russia and China. But I digress).
Their crime? Helping users of the base layer Bitcoin protocol achieve forward spending privacy by crafting pristine zero-link UTXOs. The unspent capacity of which was over 10,000 bitcoins, or twice the capacity of the Lightning Network which continues to hover around, and often under, 5,000 bitcoins.#FREESAMOURAI
Listen to these podcast episodes for more information.
Listen to these podcast episodes for more information.
- Prescient warnings just before the indictment from Diverter.
- Update when it became known what had happened.
- Follow up with Diverter and Zelko after the fact
- Reassessing your privacy plan with Urban Hacker in a world without a zero-link coinjoin implementation (Whirlpool).
Why run Ashigaru compared to Samourai Wallet?
One might ask the logical question, why run Ashigaru, my Samourai Wallet is still working!?
To which, Max Tannahill, a community member, has given the following list to answer.
To which, Max Tannahill, a community member, has given the following list to answer.
- Cheaper BIP47 connections
- Soroban coinjoins (Tor link about this)
- Better BIP47 recovery
- No risk of DNS hijacking for the PayNym server as its over Tor
- Ability to switch Dojos more easily
- Spending warnings that Samourai never got to deploy to production
- Next block fee estimation
- UI improvements on Samourai
- Removal of broken links to whirlpool, the old Soroban server and the old Iceland Dojo
- No clearnet connections at all
How-to Guide for Ashigaru
Download the APK
- Prerequisite: Tor Browser is a requirement.
- Open the Tor Browser and paste in this 🧅 link.
- Recommended to use a phone with Android 8+ that still receives security updates.
- Recommended to use a GrapheneOS phone (Pixel only). Non-Pixel owners can use Lineage OS which is a less secure, but viable, option. Or just use stock android if you have no idea how to change the operating system on your phone or don't want to do so.
- Carry out software verification. A PGP signed message is below the APK. The Keybase Verify tool can be used to do the verification.
- This is what it looks like on Keybase when completed. ⤵
Install the Ashigaru mobile application
- From within your device's files, tap on the Ashigaru APK file
- Tap "Install"
- When complete tap "Done", or tap "Open" to launch the mobile application
- The Ashigaru mobile application has now been installed on your Android device. You will now see the Ashigaru app icon in your list of installed apps.
Setting up Ashigaru
- You need to connect to your own self-hosted Dojo (this is a specific type of Bitcoin node). Ashigaru doesn't run a node for you to point your wallet to, you'll need to do this yourself.
- DIY options include:
- Community nodes at Dojo Bay (Obviously a privacy trade-off if you outsource your node to a 3rd party.)
- You need a pen and paper for writing down your 12 word Mnemonic seed phrase.
- Make a strong passphrase (4-6 memorable but random words) and put it separately from the offline seed phrase backup, e.g., in your password manager (KeePass or Bitwarden are good options).
- Claim your PayNym with it's associated Pepehash avatar.
PayNym Support: Migrate seamlessly to a new directory that uses a Pepehash avatar scheme for representing BIP47 reusable payment codes.
Using Ashigaru
- When sending, if possible, and just as in Sparrow Desktop Wallet, a fake coinjoin is created by using two of your UTXOs as inputs to obscure what is occuring onchain. Onlookers will see what appears to be two parties collaborating to spend together. This adds a bit of extra miner fee cost, but this is the cost of extra privacy. You can opt out of this privacy enhancement.
- If you want to send or receive privately and with a static address, BIP47 PayNyms, will accomplish this. As long as both parties have a wallet that supports this standard. Samourai Wallet, Stack Duo, and Sparrow are the others that I know of at this time. Simply put in their PayNym, e.g., mine is +mereegg59, or scan their QR containing the data for the PayNym and connect with them. This will involve sending a small transaction onchain. But once one of you does, both parties can send back and forth privately without ever needing to request a fresh address.
- There is an option when spending to use ricochet. This will add hops to help obscure the history of your UTXO for anyone who is using passive software to check X hops in the past for some connection to a sanctioned address. Good for spending UTXOs that you don't know the prior history of. Although personally I think taint is merely a mindset, some entities will not receive UTXOs that have either been coinjoined or are too close to a sanctioned address.
- There is an option in the tools menu for doing a collaborative spend, known as Soroban Coinjoin.
- Unfortunately Whirlpool is not yet a feature of this wallet.
- Here is the Tor link where you can donate to them
- Here is the Tor link for their code base
- Here is the Tor link for their documentation
- Here is the Tor link for updating the Ashigaru app
- Here is the Tor link for their contact info. Keep in mind this requires a different PGP key than the one used to verify the APK (unless you use protonmail and then PGP isn't required).