Samourai Wallet Co-Founders Arrested...
Before jumping into this post, I wanted to briefly give my opinion on the indictment. The state of the current legal overreach of the federal government is more than just sad, it should be warning shot and wake up call to not just all who care about privacy, but to anyone who cares about their rights as human being with dignity.
The reality is, in the name of "protection" from "bad things", that US citizen's rights are disregarded and tossed aside. This is beyond evident by the fact that LE isn't going after the criminals who committed the crime, but attacking the developers who made privacy tools that WORKED, going even so far as to go beyond their jurisdiction to arrest and indict these developers and halt their operation in foreign nations.
Bitcoin is meant to be Freedom Money, peer-to-peer digital cash, a tool not everyone will use, but a tool anyone CAN use.
Samourai Wallet enabled this vision to be possible.
For great podcasts on the Samourai case check out this list:
The Vonu Podcast
Odysee
UNGOVERNABLE MISFITS - UNCENSORED ANTI-POLITICAL MOVEMENTOdysee
We were official hardware partners, i.e. they endorsed the Tanto as the best way to run your own plug-n-play Dojo and backend for their wallet software. An endorsement we were proud of to have achieved, but Ronin has always remained completely separate entity from the Samourai Wallet team. Though, we had always communicated closely with their team and have become close friends with them, which is why the current situation hurts us in our hearts as well.
Given that the RoninDojo software was created by Samourai Wallet users for Samourai Wallet users, we as a team decided the best approach, was to prevent legal complications until we were given legal advice. This meant we were not in a position to make a public statement straightaway and had to stick to saying "we will provide an update on the matter soon".
After having spoken to lawyers on the subject, there is no reason to believe that running your own node software is illicit, nor is writing the code illicit, and Samourai Wallet (when using your own RoninDojo backend) is STILL the best Bitcoin wallet in the space... and thus our mission continues. We MUST adapt and overcome.
This government overreach enforced on SamouraiWallet, was a reminder to refactor our infrastructure to protect the code, the users, and the team.
Adapt and Overcome
Moving Repositories
With the US government seizure of the Samourai server came the shutdown of their Gitlab instance, previously hosted on code.samourai.io. We utilized their self-hosted repository which made it easy for us to maintain our fork of their node software stack, Dojo. Thus the seizure put an immediate halt to our operations and development, to include the Beta testing for v2.2.0.
We are currently moving to our own self-hosted instance that will be available via tor browser. To clarify: we cannot rely on middle-men such as a domain registrar to protect us from any government procedural overreach. With this preemptive switch to give access only with onion URL's, we can be sure that we serve our code for as long as we are in control of our own servers.
With the changes in repository access, it will require additional changes to the software which we will implement in v2.1.4 as soon as possible. This update will however require a bit of manual work for users to pull. In the release blog we will provide easy step by step instructions to get you on the latest. After that one-time event, further updates should work as automatic as before.
Team Restructuring
Another sad aspect of the Samourai Wallet indictment was the clear and evident unconstitutional attack on software developers. As I like to say: "the rules are made up and the fed holds the pen". I am sad to say: despite the fact our software is in no way implicated by the indictment, not everyone on our team is in a position to risk continuing with the project.
Thus the RoninDojo team has shrunk significantly in size, which has forced us to make some minor strategic changes. Dammkewl will be taking a step back from development to ensure he can take care of his personal responsibilities, given that his jurisdiction has comparatively fewer "constitutional guarantees" for his freedom to write code. Guarantees that currently ring hollow in these circumstances, which makes his decision that much more understandable.
Thankfully we still have a team of developers with the welcome addition of NullFireFear (零火怖) and TexMechanicaLW, who will help fill the gap. The v2.1.4 update will include an updated pgp key file for the new team setup as we will be moving forward.
Additionally, an updated canary to include all sites in our control, the new code repository (requires tor browser), and all PGP keys can be found here or click on PGP Keys | Canary located in the footer. This will be where we will host these files moving forward.
Retiring the Tanto
Since we released the Tanto in December of 2021: we've made 3 modifications to our custom enclosure, brought sovereignty and privacy to hundreds of Bitcoiners, operated without giving into Venture Capital money, had 35 software releases, and kept to true to ethos. The Tanto has served us and the community extremely well. Thus, with a heavy heart, we believe it is time to turn our focus to the future.
You may be thinking this decision was made in response to the indictments/team restructuring. However, this was product decision made well before the indictments, and is in-line with our roadmap. It is clarified further below, but in short, our focus is to serve as many users as possible with our software. With the decision of selling hardware, came the responsibility of supporting it, which takes away our focus from having our software compatible with more than what we sell.
2TB Upgrades Kits
Rather than trying to sell 2TB NVMEs that you could acquire for cheaper online or at your local retail store, we felt the best way to assist our users was to provide tested and proven nvme enclosures and the NVMes that we used during testing.
The reality is, in order for selling upgrade kits to make sense for us, we would have needed to charge far more than we were comfortable with. We didn't think that was the right way to honor our loyal customers.
Additionally, when the NVMe backup code is complete, we'll provide an in-depth walk through guide of how exactly to migrate from your 1TB set-up to a new 2TB setup that will ensure all your essential data is kept and get you up and running quickly.
Wait, I just bought a Tanto??
First I'll say as a reminder, we have no intention of dropping support for our Tanto users. Our software and our team will continue to officially support Tantos through to the end of 2025.
What's Next?
Focus development on v3.x
RoninDojo started with two guys who tinkered around wrote some bash scripts to automate the Dojo backend services. From a software engineering perspective, it wasn't well designed or written (I don't mind admitting this), but it worked. With v3.x we will completely re-write, re-design, and re-structure RoninDojo to be faster, more efficient, and compatible with more platforms to serve anyone using a Raspberry Pi, to a Tanto, to a beefed up x86 server.
Without spoiling anything, there are some other applications we will be looking into building as well to further empower Bitcoiners to be sovereign individuals. The goal will always to be to support the sovereign individual and empower them to use the most efficient and private Bitcoin focused node on the market
