¶ The Wallet Account Structure
An "account" refers to a segregated section of the wallet. Samourai Wallet makes use of several accounts to handle various different functionalities.
| Account | Description | Derivation Path |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit | Your default bitcoin wallet account | m/44'|49'|84'/0'/0' |
| Premix | A hidden account for outputs pendings mixing | m/84'/0'/2147483645' |
| Postmix | Your mixed outputs are stored in this account | m/84'/0'/2147483646' |
| Ricochet | A hidden account for generating Ricochet addresses | m/84'/0'/2147483647' |
¶ Deposit Account
This account consists of all outputs within your standard Samourai Wallet. It is the default screen you see when opening the wallet. Funds in this account have not been cycled through Whirlpool yet. You can receive deposits directly into this account on any address type.
¶ Pre-mix Account
This account consists of all the outputs that are prepared to mix in Whirlpool but are still pending. Users typically do not interact with this account directly, outputs will remain in pre-mix until they have one confirmation and they are selected in a Whirlpool cycle. These outputs cannot be spent yet but will have priority in any Whirlpool cycle.
¶ Post-mix Account
This account consists of all the outputs that have completed at least one cycle in Whirlpool. These outputs are available for spending, or available to "remix" for free and increase their privacy.
In Samourai Wallet, on the Whirlpool main screen, you can tap your Whirlpool balance to cycle between displaying your total Pre-mix Balance, your total Post-mix Balance, and your combined total Whirlpool Balance (Pre-mix balance + Post-mix Balance).
¶ Bad Bank Account
Feature not yet active.
¶ Ricochet Account
This account acts as the address generator for each 'hop' of a Ricochet transaction. This is done to ensure that until the final 'hop' to your desired recipient, the bitcoin being sent is always under the control of your wallet. Read more on Ricochet transactions here.
¶ Extended Public Keys
An extended public key is a part of a bitcoin standard BIP32 that can be thought of as a 'read only' view into a wallet. The extended public key allows full view to all transactions, addresses, and balances in a specific wallet account, but doesn't allow spending of any kind. For spending, private keys are required, and the extended public key doesn't contain any private keys.
You should not share your extended public keys
¶ XPUB
XPUB in the context of Samourai Wallet refers to an Extended Public Key that we derive legacy bitcoin addresses for (addresses beginning with 1) as defined in the commonly accepted BIP44 standard.
¶ View Deposit Account XPUB
- Tap the PayNym in the top-left corner of the main balance screen.
- Tap Settings and then Wallet
- Tap Show BIP44 XPUB
¶ YPUB
YPUB in the context of Samourai Wallet refers to an Extended Public Key that we derive Segwit compatibility addresses for (addresses beginning with 3) as defined in the commonly accepted BIP49 standard.
¶ View Deposit Account YPUB
- Tap the PayNym in the top-left corner of the main balance screen.
- Tap Settings and then Wallet
- Tap Show Segwit YPUB
¶ ZPUB
ZPUB in the context of Samourai Wallet refers to an Extended Public Key that we derive native segwit bitcoin addresses for (addresses beginning with bc1) as defined in the commonly accepted BIP84 standard. This is the default used in the deposit account of the wallet.
¶ View Deposit Account ZPUB
- Tap the PayNym in the top-left corner of the main balance screen.
- Tap Settings and then Wallet
- Tap Show Segwit ZPUB
¶ View Pre-Mix Account ZPUB
- Tap the PayNym in the top-left corner of the main balance screen.
- Tap Settings and then Wallet
- Tap Show Whirlpool pre-mix ZPUB
¶ View Post-Mix Account ZPUB
- Tap the PayNym in the top-left corner of the main balance screen.
- Tap Settings and then Wallet
- Tap Show Whirlpool post-mix ZPUB
¶ Miner Fees
Bitcoin transactions are sent to the network with an extra fee attached. This fee is paid directly to the miner who adds the transaction to a block.
Miner fees are paid by the sender to incentivize the bitcoin miners to include transactions in the blockchain. The fee rates vary as the network is more or less congested.
¶ How miner fees are calculated
Miner fees are based on the size of the transaction being sent in bytes. Miner fees are not impacted by the amount of bitcoin being spent.
The fee rate is generally measured in Satoshi/byte. A Satoshi is the smallest unit of bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC). For the purposes of this example, let's say a "standard" bitcoin transaction is around 250 bytes in size.
So, a standard transaction of 250 bytes, with a fee rate of 100 sat/b would be calculated as:
250 byte transaction * 100 satoshis = 25,000 satoshis = 0.00025000 BTC
Simply put, the more outputs that are used to form a transaction, the larger the transaction will be in bytes and the more a user will pay in fees.
¶ Choosing the right miner fee
Samourai Wallet provides users with dynamic fee profiles based on a rolling average of 72 hours of mempool network conditions. From the send screen you are able to modify the fee profile used on a per-transaction basis using the fee slider or by manually entering a fee rate.
The fee slider features three different priority 'profiles', and these are based on how quickly you need the transaction to be added to a block. In bitcoin a block is usually produced roughly every 10 minutes.
¶ Low Fee Profile
This profile aims to have your transaction confirmed within the next 1-24 blocks
¶ Normal Fee Profile
This profile aims to have your transaction confirmed within the next 1-6 blocks
¶ Urgent Fee Profile
This profile aims to have your transaction confirmed in the next 1-2 blocks
¶ Increasing the Miner Fee
Samourai is one of the only Bitcoin wallets to allow you to top-up the miner fee of transactions you have already received or sent.
- Tap the unconfirmed transaction in the Balance screen. You will be taken to the Transaction Details screen.
- On the bottom of the Transaction Details screen, tap the button labeled Boost Transaction to begin the process. You will be asked to confirm the new miner fee before the boost is attempted.
- Once you have sent the boost you will see a small transaction leave your wallet, this is the boost transaction. Both this boost transaction and your original stuck transaction should confirm within the next block.
The boost feature is not compatible with every transaction made from the wallet. There is a requirement for either, RBF to be enabled (see below) or for a change output to be available from the 'stuck' transaction.
¶ Configuring for lowest fees
By default, Samourai Wallet errs on the side of increasing the blockchain privacy and plausible deniability of transactions. This focus has a side effect of increasing in the size of transactions created, thus increasing the overall cost of the miner fee when sending. The wallet can be fully configured for creating low fee transactions by following the steps shown below.
¶ Disable Like-Type Change
- Tap the PayNym on the top-left corner of the main balance screen.
- Tap Settings
- Tap Transactions
- Ensure that Receive change to like-typed outputs is off (no checkmark)
¶ Enable Replace-By-Fee (RBF)
- Tap the PayNym on the top-left corner of the main balance screen.
- Tap Settings
- Tap Transactions
- Ensure that Spend using RBF is on (checkmark)
¶ Disable STONEWALL
STONEWALL is enabled by default for all transactions. You can disable STONEWALL on a per-transaction-basis, by toggling the STONEWALL toggle switch to the OFF position when composing your transaction.
Disabling STONEWALL will result in smaller transactions, at the expense of blockchain privacy.
¶ Change Outputs
When a bitcoin transaction is created, the bitcoin wallet searches for available unspent outputs in the wallet and uses them to send the specified amount to the specified destination.
The entire unspent output must be spent, so if the amount on the output is larger than the specified amount to send, the remainder is returned to your wallet, in an output referred to as "change".
¶ Like-Type change
By default, Samourai Wallet will either create segwit enabled or standard change outputs depending on the type of address that is being sent to.
For example, if you are sending to an address beginning with 3, the change output returned to your wallet will also begin with 3. Conversely, if you're sending to an address beginning with 1 the change returned to your wallet will be to an address beginning with 1.
Like-type change outputs are a privacy feature designed to obfuscate the change output and the destination output when viewed on the blockchain.
¶ Disable Like-Type change
Users who prefer to keep all change outputs on segwit enabled addresses (starting with bc1q) can disable like-type change outputs.
- Tap the PayNym on the top-left corner of the main balance screen.
- Tap Settings
- Tap Transactions
- Ensure that Receive change to like-typed outputs is off (no checkmark)
Disabling Like-Type change will result in potential future lower miner fees, at the expense of an increased blockchain footprint.