Quick note on why we chose Spark and Breez for the new Primal Wallet. Let’s start with our requirements. We need a simple, reliable, zero-config spending wallet that just works out of the box. Anything less than that is a non-starter for our target audience of casual social media users. Those who have used Primal’s custodial wallet over the past couple of years will agree that we were able to meet these requirements. The big tradeoff was that, in order to legally offer a custodial service, we had to KYC our users, impose balance limits, and deny service in certain regions where we didn’t have a license to custody funds. Building on Spark via the Breez SDK enabled us to deliver a wallet that is a strict improvement for our users: no KYC, no limits, and available globally. It’s interoperable with other Spark-based wallets — so you can use the same seed phrase in Primal, Wallet of Satoshi, Cake Wallet, and others. This undeniably gives a lot more agency to our users. There is ongoing debate about what constitutes “real” self-custody. Spark uses a federation of operators and provides unilateral exit. From a legal standpoint, this clears the self-custody threshold. That said, nothing matches the self-sovereignty of holding bitcoin funds on-chain. Primal is a spending wallet, not meant to hold large amounts. We always encourage our users to store their savings in self custody on-chain. I believe the wallet we shipped with Primal 3.0 offers the best set of tradeoffs available today. The good news is that our new wallet architecture enables us to easily add support for Ark, Cashu and other protocols in the future. If you have specific suggestions for how we could do better by our users; if you think there’s a better way to legally deliver a simple, reliable, zero-config spending wallet that just works, let us know and we’ll be happy to explore it.

Replies (45)

SweedWick 's avatar
SweedWick 3 months ago
Appreciate the up front details and explanation.
I think the ship has completely sailed on privacy on Bitcoin. 2017 made it a very fragile dream, and ETF adoption completely nuked hope for it. Someone please add L1 privacy and prove me wrong.
Chad Lupkes's avatar
Chad Lupkes 3 months ago
Is the existing strike wallet still an option if we don't want to bother changing, or will we have to move the sats to a new wallet at some point?
Ha Kohen's avatar
Ha Kohen 3 months ago
That’s awesome! 💪🏾👏🏾👏🏾⚡️🍷
Oh so you half debunked 1/3 points and it's all good now? Good luck putting a company and service provider between your Bitcoin and yourself. That was Satoshi's vision, the whitepaper famously said Bitcoin: A Peer-to-company-to-service-provider-to-Peer Electronic Cash System as we all remember. It's amazing how willing some "Bitcoiners" are of reinventing tradfi/banking with extra steps.
Benking's avatar
Benking 3 months ago
Love the direction. Curious to see how Spark evolves vs Ark/Cashu long term 👀
Bitcoin Bazar's avatar
Bitcoin Bazar 3 months ago
Next milestone is bitcoiners gathering to create their own instance of a Spark entity not depending on the really corporate Lightspark. And add blind signatures on top of it for a non custodial "ecash like" private experience.
Niko Nakamoto's avatar
Niko Nakamoto 3 months ago
Looking for Ark and Cashu support. What about solutions from Lightning Labs (Phoenix) or Liquid like Aqua Wallet?
John Satsman's avatar
John Satsman 3 months ago
I guess that’s the problem with companies. Everyone wants to do everything legal and I just want an experience that is akin to the experience ahem…some people, had on the silk road/The armory Fuck the regulators, fuck the feds, just do things. #YouNeverKnowWhatYouGotTillItsGone View quoted note →
PK ⚡️'s avatar
PK ⚡️ 3 months ago
Will use this on a Square terminal somewhere
The Primal team is essentially saying: "We traded the risk of 'The Government shutting us down' for the risk of 'The Federation acting up.'" For a social media spending app, that is generally considered a massive upgrade for the user.
You're better off keeping watch on the improvements real Bitcoin and Monero are making in regards to privacy, alongside other private currencies; Epstein-Blockstream Coin will never make any meaningful strides towards actual positive change.
All reasonable points and I want to apologize if my post about this was overly alarmist. I would just suggest: Before using the new Primal wallet, it could be useful to be sure you're comfortable sharing your I.P. address and device user-agent with LightSpark. Probably for most people, like 95%+ of users, it's fine. If you care, you can read up on LightSpark here:
Split's avatar
Split 3 months ago
Spark is releasing the APIs for unilateral exit this quarter.
Honestly it is not the best solution but it really makes the life of the developers much better. Second if an user doesnt want Spark they can properly self host a lightning wallet. So all in all, congratulations on the smooth upgrade!