Two Factor Authentication Recovery

We would like to update the community on new improvements and features we have added to GreenAddress. Previously, we blogged about the new long term two factor recovery procedure we were planning to implement, so users who have lost the ability to access their bitcoins can now recover them. This recovery procedure is now implemented and available on the desktop and Android versions of our software. Our Terms of Service is also updated in preparation for the CSV changes coming soon, and to clarify the details of the recovery procedure. We would like to thank everyone for their patience as we worked to provide a method to recover lost access.

Updated Desktop App

In addition to implementing the new recovery procedure, we have ported the GreenAddress Chrome application as an interim step as we move focus towards building on more native frameworks. The new desktop application is based on libwally, our libsecp256k1-based wallet library. It also fully supports hardware wallets like the Trezor One and Ledger Nano S, with support planned for other hardware wallets.

Although we are deprecating the Chrome application and our Web Wallet, they are still usable for the time being. Note that the Chrome application and Web Wallet will not be updated in the future and will eventually be removed in the coming months, so we strongly encourage migrating to the desktop application or smartphone apps.

Updates & Bug Fixes

Updates and bug fixes include the following:

Added support for sending to native SegWit addresses (bech32)

Added support for the new two factor reset and dispute procedure

Fixes and improvements related to BIP 70

System messages are now shown to the user on startup

Various improvements to hardware wallet support

Android specific updates and fixes include:

Moving to the latest Android SDK

UI and notification updates for Oreo

Removing support for pre-KitKat devices

Updated SPV checkpoints

Removing support for dead Android platforms (e.g. MIPS)

Improving Recovery & Trustlessness

As we noted in our previous blog post, we will be taking advantage of CSV (CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY), a feature in Bitcoin that allows us to greatly improve recoverability for GreenAddress users. Support for this feature will be included in future GreenAddress releases.



CSV will allow us to do the following:

Make recovery processing completely trustless and atomic

Remove the need for nLockTime files

Remove the need for an email address for nLockTime notifications

Have all newly generated addresses in wallets automatically be able to be recovered

Minimize trust requirements in GreenAddress

The biggest improvement CSV enables is reducing the amount of trust users have to place in GreenAddress. With CSV, users will no longer have to worry about GreenAddress shutting down nor will they have to trust GreenAddress to provide out of band nLockTime transactions.

We will continue to provide more information as the deployment time approaches. We are very excited about the improvements to our user experience that CSV will bring!

New Native iOS App and GreenAddress Development Kit

We are also excited to announce a new native iOS app which will include an updated and rebranded UI, and will be based on our new GreenAddress Development Kit (GDK). The GDK is based on libwally and provides a high-level coding interface for anyone that wants to access GreenAddress programmatically. Along with CSV implementation updates, we will provide more information on the new iOS app and GDK as their respective release times approach.

Conclusion

We appreciate you taking the time to read this announcement. We would like to remind users again to enable a second two factor method as a backup if they currently only have a single method enabled. As always, we are busy working on other new features and enhancements to the platform, and will update the community about them in the future.

If you have questions or comments, you can reach us at info@greenaddress.it.

Thanks,

Lawrence and the GreenAddress Team