SLP160 BTCxZelko – Protect Your Bitcoin Privacy With Ronin Dojo

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BTCxZelko, Samourai Wallet community member co-founded the Ronin Dojo project, an easy to use Raspberry Pi / Odroid install script and UI to run your own Samourai Wallet Dojo. It’s an easy, cost effective way to run your own node backing your Samourai Wallet, which enables you to use Bitcoin over Tor, with coinjoining and best in class privacy features. 

Zelko and I talk:

  • How he learned command line 
  • How he got into Bitcoin privacy techniques
  • Recommended hardware for Ronin Dojo
  • How to install it for yourself

Zelko links: 

Relevant prior episodes: 

Sponsor links:

Stephan Livera links:

Podcast Transcript:

Stephan Livera:

Zelko welcome to the show.

Zelko:

Hey, thanks for having me, Stephan. I’m super excited. For sure.

Stephan Livera:

So I’m a fan of your work. I use the Ronin Dojo myself and I know you have an interesting story, so without doxing too much about yourself, but I know as part of your normal career, it’s not IT related at all and yet you’ve come into this and you have really picked up a lot of these things up and become a big contributor in your own right of people who want to use Samourai Wallet and use Coinjoin and privacy techniques with their own node. So can you tell us a little bit about your journey, how you got into Bitcoin and Coinjoin and privacy techniques?

Zelko:

Yeah, for sure. So I actually got into Bitcoin back when my father in law told me about Bitcoin in 2015 and he was like trying to tell me, I mean, I had heard about Bitcoin but you know, friends buying it on silk road and stuff like that. But you know, he kind of showed us his video and he actually gave us a Bitcoin he gave my wife a Bitcoin for watching just to watch the video cause he really wanted us to get into it. And so we were like, I was like, we need to buy this right now. And I listened to my better half apparently. So we kinda left it there for awhile. And then in the, that started the 2016 into 2017 I really started buying a bunch. And then I really got into right around the end of 2017 when lightning started becoming a big thing.

Zelko:

That’s kinda when I started diving into, I was like, I want to get into this tech stuff. And I ran I followed to guide around full node. As my first time touching command line ever. And then I bought some stickers on lightning node, you know, and I thought I was like, thought I was like an IT wizard. And then from there, you know, full time, you know, I had work and life come kinda catching up with me. So I came back, I started kind of getting back into Bitcoin big time about about a year ago now. And you know, I came back and I saw like, Oh, coinjoin was starting to be a thing and I didn’t know anything about coinjoin. So I jumped on Twitter and I saw Samourai Wallet was talking about it and I saw Wasabi, but I didn’t know what was what. And I just looked at my phone and I was like, Oh, look, I got Samourai Wallet. I’m going, let me see what this Whirlpool stuff is about. And that was kind of my journey into it from there. It was just craziness.

Stephan Livera:

Sorry on that. Can you tell us what were some of the wallets and tools you used in the past and then why Samourai now?

Zelko:

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, in like a 2018 I got, I finally switched off of iOS and I got a pixel 2. And so I was just like, Oh man. Like I think Green wallet was what I used up my first wallet besides, you know, Coinbase, like all the other you know, new people there. I got you know, so using Green address, I started using, I kind of experimented with a bunch of wallet, so I used Bread (BRD) was my first one and that’s terrible. You know, and then I went to Green and then once I got my phone once I got the pixel I was like, let me see what else is on Android. And I saw Samourai Wallet and then on top of that on Twitter, I always loved seeing them just destory people. So that was kind of, yeah, that was a thing for me.

Zelko:

I was like, yeah, these guys are awesome. You know what I mean? Let me let me jump on this. So I, that’s when I kinda started playing with it. And back then, you know, the the Stealth address, you had the Stealth you know, dial open and I was trying to play with all the tools, but yeah, I didn’t really jump too much into all their privacy stuff until I came back and I saw this Whirlpool stuff and I was like, man, this wallet is light years ahead of everybody. And then for lightning, you know, I was a huge, huge Jack Mallers fan. I used Zap. That was my test net tool. I just thought Jack was I still think he is, he’s just way ahead of his time and you know, I’m a huge fan, so you know, but once I switched to Android and you know, that wasn’t really a thing anymore. But you know, it’s been an exciting ride for sure. These past three years have really just been amazing Bitcoin development.

Stephan Livera:

Right. And so as I recall in, I’m trying to remember the exact timeline. So basically Whirlpool came out and one of the criticisms at that time was, Oh, but if you’re not running it on off your own Dojo, then you know, that’s a problem. Right. And so then the response was, Hey, let’s have Dojo. So can you actually, for the listeners, can you just tell them what is Dojo?

Zelko:

So Dojo is a full encompassing, I like to call it a backend server because not only is it your own full node, it launches your own maintenance tools. So you can then plug in, you know, your different xPubs, your different wallets. You can plug all those in so that it can connect from anywhere. You can have your own full node backed wallet, which there are, they were the only ones for a long time. I believe Green address doesn’t now, but or Blockstream does theirs. But yeah, so it’s, it’s your full encompassing, you know, one stop shop for your full back end node for full privacy and you’re not relying on anybody else. So that’s what Dojo is. And yeah, that was the big thing, man. Everybody, everyone was running a Whirlpool. When I first got there, I think I started running Whirlpool and in June and or end of June into July. And everyone was like, yeah, this is cool, but we need like, we need Dojo. Like you should be running Dojo. And that’s when I had to get a Pi 4 and you know, start going on that.

Stephan Livera:

Yup. And so at that time, this is obviously pre Ronin Dojo existing and so there was a channel, telegram, chat channel and though guys there helping you to install it yourself, but it was a bit more of a technical process. So can you tell us a bit about how you learned a bit about running Dojo before Ronin in that time?

Zelko:

Oh yeah. It was, yeah, that was a huge pain. So Dojo for those who don’t know was and still is, it’s mainly geared towards a full computer set up, you know, for the non-technical people. But like, you know, X86,64 set up. So for real computers, not a Pi4 or Odroid or anything like that. So when that first came up, but to me this is like the perfect opportunity to be running it on a, you know, single board, a little Pi 4 just running in the corner of your house. This was like the perfect opportunity. So I saw a couple guys in the chat talking about it cause I didn’t have a dedicated computer for it. And this guy Nicholas, who I’m still like super huge fan of who comes in, very rarely, but he he was the first one to figure all this stuff out.

Zelko:

And you know, we ran it on Raspbian, which was like the go to for the Pi4 stuff. But yeah, to get through that with super technical. There was no guides. There was no you know, people would just kind of paste different commands for me to follow. And I kinda just learned my way. And the key for me was really just trying to understand what you know, what the commands are doing, you know, and I try to learn, take all that stuff that I learned and then I started making guides because I knew that I wasn’t the only person out there that wanted to do this but had no clue on how to do it.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And before learning all this stuff with command line and Linux and so on, what were you using before? Were you a Windows or a Mac guy?

Zelko:

Yeah.I ran, I had both. Yeah. My like I like a school computer cause you know, I work full time and then I’m an MBA student online as well. So I was using, you know, just a regular computer, a regular windows laptop. And then I had a Mac book, you know, eventually I did a dual boot so I could have Ubuntu and be a cool kid. But yeah, I mean it wasn’t until all this stuff happening, I was like, I need to get all this stuff going on. Like right now, like I couldn’t tell you the amount of hours that my wife was like, what are you doing? And I was like, Hey, you know, I’m so close every day. I was like, I’m so close. But you know, that’s how you learn though.

Zelko:

Like that’s the big thing that I wanted people to understand is that, you know, it seems really scary to jump into this command line because that’s like what we’ve gotten away with. But you know, it’s really not scary and it’s really it’s more intuitive than, than people think it is because they don’t know what commands do what. But once you get it, it’s like, man, like I, everything that I put into Ronin is now I have to do it myself manually and just cause I love the feel of doing it myself and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the Samourai community cause they are just like hands down the best community that I’ve seen for sure.

Stephan Livera:

Awesome. And so can you tell us a little bit about how you went about learning some of those different commands? Right. Just to learn how to maneuver around the Linux file system, how to do the different commands. What were some of those that you learned from that time went before Ronin Dojo?

Zelko:

Yeah. Yes. So a big thing for me was I think one of the issues with new people starting into the terminal is that you don’t, you don’t really see it, you don’t really see like where you’re at or what spot you went to. So a lot of things that I would do is just explore into the actual file system with like, you know, the CD command and then try to go somewhere and then I would do LS all the time and that just kinda shows you the list of everything that’s right that you’re in. And I was like, Oh, okay. I get it. And then I would try to just keep going further and further and just using that CD command and then, you know, from there if I can’t fit, if I couldn’t figure something out I just, I would Google whatever it was.

Zelko:

Like, I’m trying to copy this file to this file. And you’d be amazed that there’s literally nothing that you, there’s very rarely will you find the answer not on like stack exchange or you know, someone already posted someone else’s already had the question that you have. And you know, for me it was the big thing was why I wanted to learn was it, I felt like I was a burden and in that chat group and the telegram group and I really wanted to understand what was going on. So it really took the time to understand like like for example, like a, you’re trying to figure out what that, if you have a system set up right, like a system D set up where like for example, for Ronin, we had that with Whirlpool where it’s just running on boot. You can check the commands with like systemctl status or you know, journalctl and you can kind of check to see what’s going on.

Zelko:

But I wanted to learn that cause I didn’t want, I didn’t want to bother all these guys that are like, to me, they were like these all stars that, you know, I could never be part of that elite group. So I was like, let me just not bother these people with my simple questions of like, what does this command do? But I took that knowledge and I just like, this is why I’ve always helped people. Cause people like Nicholas sat down and would DM me for hours just helping me figure this stuff out. And that was always my thing. I was like, I need to help people who are trying to do what I’m doing and they’re coming from my same position. No IT background, you know, no one in my family knows IT you know, it was just me trying to figure it out. And you know, that was, that was the big thing is just exploring and just failing, exploring and failing, exploring and failing. And then eventually it clicks, you know, and it’s very logical too, so once you start to understand, it makes more sense.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. That’s great. That’s a great story. And I think I have a lot of listeners, I have a lot of listeners who are on the technical side themselves, but I also have a lot of listeners who are on the more, let’s say economic and investment side. And they didn’t like to try and get into the technical stuff. They just think, Oh, that’s, that’s beyond me. I’m not going to get into that. But I think today we should talk through a few examples of ways and key concepts that hopefully help them decide, Hey, actually I should learn some of this stuff and at least try and at least start the process. And so let’s talk through a few of the common command and common things to think about when you’re trying to learn how to use come online. So as you mentioned using CD and LS to know what position we are in, the file structure is an important one. Sometimes you will need to stop and restart the process. And that’s as you mentioned with the systemctl command and you might also need to check the logs on a specific piece of the of the Dojo or of the stack. Can you tell us a little bit about that you know, logs checking and how you do that and how you know what to look for.

Zelko:

So yeah, I’ll gear all this towards, towards Dojo cause that’s a big thing. So for first off I think anybody, especially those listeners who are, you know, they’re like, Oh, this is too technical, or you know, even if they’re running something like myNode, which is very user friendly and that aspect of very, you know, the UI is great, you’re going to, at some point you’re going to need to troubleshoot. And that kind of comes into the logs that we’re gonna talk about. But and if you’re not running your own node, there’s no reason at this point in time that especially with a lockdown, with Corona, there’s no reason to not learn this stuff. So you know, the big thing was just so for checking the Dojo logs, you just go in and the great thing about Dojo is that they made it so that it’s very easy.

Zelko:

All you have to do is get to that, get to your, the way way Ronin sets it up is in Dojo/Docker/my-Dojo. And that’s your main hub. That’s kind of where you do all your activity from. So if you know where that spot is, you can just get right there and then you do a sudo command, which gives you that it’s like a root power. It’s kind of saying like, Hey I’m a friends with the all powerful root who has access to everything. So you do the sudo and then to activate any scripts you just do a period, a slash and then whatever the script name is, so for Dojo, it’s, you know, ./dojo.sh and then logs, whatever log that you want to find. So the nice thing about Dojo is that literally they have everything set up around that Dojo script.

Zelko:

So you don’t need to know much other than I need to get to that Dojo script that Dojo.sh and then type in a, you can do help and that’ll kind of display all the commands that you can run. And then from there you kinda, there’s a lot of troubleshooting that goes in and a lot of learning. And I think from the Ronin side, we try to do as much as we could to put as much information into the Wiki link that we have so that users can understand what’s going on. You know, the the main ones though is the tracker. That kinda tells you if it’s pulling all the block headers and the mempool is tracking properly and that your transactions are being pulled in correctly. And then obviously you have your Bitcoin core logs and that tells you, Hey, where am I at?

Zelko:

That’s just your standard Bitcoin core. You know, trace logs. If you were to do that. And you know, that let you know, like, Hey, my, Bitcoin node still running. And then and then the other big one that I check a lot is my Tor, my Tor logs. Cause I like to make sure that if if I’m having connectivity issues or you know, something’s not working right, I generally check the Tor logs first. And you can always reset it to and with everything being in Docker also makes things a little, a little unique, but it’s also very easy. So a couple of commands right there, just you know, for restarting just the Tor Docker, it would just be like sudo Docker restart Tor and then it just, all it’ll do is just restart that, Tor Docker and then it’ll connect right back to right back to the Bitcoin network and everything.

Zelko:

It should be working as, as expected. But yeah, some other easy commands. Let me just hit a couple of good ones. I love using Htop to check all of my system. So that gives me, and that’s in the Ronin Dojo, but it gives you that snapshot of how much memory you’re using what the Ram and the CPU is using at the time. So you can see like, Oh man, like I’m overloaded or you know, I’m getting close or whatever. And really, we’ve optimized everything. So that’s not an issue, but it’s nice to give you a screenshot of what’s going on, what the commands that are running. You know, it looks overwhelming at first. I know even after I’d been doing all this stuff and I ran it, I was like, Holy crap, it’s a lot, but it’s a great tool to use.

Zelko:

And then the other one that we talked about was that systemctl and that to me is I use that all the time. Just to make sure like, Hey, if your docker’s not working, that’s it. That uses that systemctl your Tor outside. If you’re running Tor outside of Docker, that’s going to be using it as well. And then obviously like for Ronin Dojo, we use it for Whirlpool. And just so it starts on boot and that’s a great tool of setting something up as a system D is a great way to have it automated so you don’t have to touch anything. And it just, it just boots. But using that systemctl status, and then the name is how I check everything. That’s how I make sure everything’s working the way it’s supposed to for sure.

Stephan Livera:

And another one you could touch on is also just how you edit files. So consider for the typical user, they’ve only used windows or Mac and they’re used to having a GUI, right? So they used to double-clicking a word file or a notepad and then editing. And they might know, they may never have even done that, right, because they might’ve just been used to having a program with a GUI where you can tick and untick things. Can you just explain a little bit around, you know, how you go sudo nano and you edit the config file and tell us a little bit about that?

Zelko:

Yeah, so I’m a big fan of nano. My partner Guerra Moneta, he’s a big VIM fan or V, either one. I like nano. It’s super easy to commands to enter in and enter out are much easier so much more user-based friendly. But so yeah, anytime that sudo or the root user, if you ever use sudo and you save something, it’s now saved as root. So you need to use sudoto edit it again. So, and we do that for the config file so that it’s not easily like written over. You don’t accidentally rewrite your RPC passwords and stuff for your core cornered. But,

Stephan Livera:

Sorry, can we just go back one sec just for a sec? Would you, would you mind just explaining what those are though? Because users might be used to doing things in a GUI, right, where they put in the, you know, they can type that in, but now in the config file they need to set those options. So can you just tell us a little bit about some of that and like the different flags, right? For example, you might be setting pruned mode or you might be setting the data directory or you might be setting your RPC password. So can you just tell us what are some of those options and why would we use that in config?

Zelko:

Okay. Yeah. So I’ll hit, I’ll hit on Dojo first. Cause Dojo sets the all their own config file. We set I’ll pull it up just so I can have it. So we pull up really you’re setting your RPC password and then you’re setting up your, which is going to be how your wallet connects to anything else. And if so you can actually use it to connect toL and D. You can use it to connect to Electrum Rust server. But so that, that’s how that connects and that’s why you really want to be able to, you want to know what that is. But the big thing is being able to go in there so you can see your RPC password. Right. And for other like Bitcoin core nodes yeah, you can set your prune there.

Zelko:

So if you don’t have a lot of memory and you want to print out your your Bitcoin core, so it’s not running as much memory, that’s, that’s all in there. But yeah, so you would get to the config file, which is just from your Docker or from Dojo/Docker/my-Dojo. Just send a CD command and then, yeah, I always do LS just to look at everything. And then so that, to edit it, that’s going to be that sudo Nano. And then they have everything set as Docker, a BitcoinD.conf is going to be your other ones. So the nice thing is once you’re up, you see it, it’s almost the same as a GUI. It’s just not as pretty, I guess, but it’s pretty much the same. And you just arrow up and down until you get to where you’re, where you need to, you make the changes that you need to, and then you control X and that that should give you a prompt to save it, right?

Zelko:

And then you just say yes with Y enter and then you’re done. So that’s the beauty of the Nano is that the ins and outs are much easier than them or anything like that. And I know for a long time it took me, it took me a while to get used to Nano to, especially when I had like a desktop, right? Like a Pi. And I connected it to my monitor and I would just like, I would go in manually and edit it myself and save it. And then but I realized that this is a lot more efficient and it actually cause if you try to save a document or you try to nano the config file and it’s saved by root you’re not going to be able to save it. And I’ll tell you and then you’re like, Oh, okay.

Zelko:

I can, I just use sudo cause it tells me I don’t have permission. And then you can edit it. And so it gives you that extra control and visualizing what’s going on a lot better. But it’s super simple in nano. And just being able to tab up and down and then make your additions or make your corrections that you need to and save it. So, and then the other thing just to note for people that if they are running Dojo and they already have passwords set. So for for Ronin, we set it for all new installs moving forward, everything is randomized. So we use a script that just randomly generates passwords for you so you don’t have to worry about any input, but if you wanted to change it yourself, you would want to stop Dojo and then go in and make those edits. But that sudo nano and then the file name. And then after you do that, you save it and then you start Dojo gun in those this configuration files will reapply it in a Dojo. So that’s just a little important note for people if they want to try to edit their files.

Stephan Livera:

Great. So that is essentially how you, some of the key commands around editing these config files and setting up Dojo. Now let’s bring it to Ronin. Why did you start Ronin? And what is Ronin Dojo?

Zelko:

So there’s a, there’s a good story for that. I will say that I’ll say we’re co-founders, man, a man grew up in Montana. And so it started out with me writing my own guides with another guy Burcak if I pronounce that right, but he’ll, he can yell at me later. So yeah, we were just writing guides for RasPi4 and I still see them floating around today, which makes me laugh. But yeah, we’re just writing guides and you know he hit me up, Guerra hit me up and he was like, Hey, like can you help me out? Like I want to add LND I want to add this and I’m gonna make scripts for everything. I was like, all right, that’s cool. That sounds like a lot. I just want to make guides to help people.

Zelko:

And then he was like, no, we should put all of our guides in one spot. And I’m like, okay. So we did that and we called it Ronin Dojo just for like single board, you know, either RasPi4 or Odroid. And and from there he was like, dude, let’s just, let’s automate everything. Let’s just make a UI. Let’s make it so people can just click a couple buttons and then start downloading and start running Dojo right there. And then from there, that was, that was it. We just started learning how to. That was my first time really learning how to script anything. So that was a whole nother journey of learning how to write scripts and a new commands to create things and create you all your system setups that you don’t need to worry about.

Zelko:

Yeah, it was I did that. We, basically did that cause we found that a lot of users still even with guides, they wanted to, they wanted it to be easier. And and our whole goal between me and Guerra was we want to bring Dojo and the privacy tools that Samourai has. We want to bring that to as many people as easy as possible. So, you know, that’s why we do it. We really want to help out all those Samourai users out there. And, I always say that, you know, Ronin Dojo is for Samourai users by Samourai users. We definitely eat our dog food for sure.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, that’s a great example of you know, it’s something you use yourself. And so for listeners who, again, coming from like an economic or investment point of view and you haven’t really looked into this too much, I’d say Ronin is a great option and as Zelko was mentioning, you script these things, meaning it’s kind of automated for you. Now, I’m not going to lie to you, you may still have to do some command line in terms of troubleshooting for things, but most of the work has been automated away for you. And so it’s a very simple process. So let’s just start with a little bit around what hardware you typically recommend for people when they want to set up their own Ronin Dojo.

Zelko:

Let me pull up the exact specs. But so I’m a big fan of the Pi4 it has better support for with Manjaro. So we use Manjaro, I think we are the only people using that right now. And I, we did that for a couple of reasons. Mostly it has a lot easier to support for things for installing like Tor. It automatically installs Tor and then it will also create a separate user, which is better for privacy purposes. Nothing is, you don’t have to worry about any sort of data leak or intruder entering through your Tor user cause that has very limited access. So there’s that and then also has a better capability. It uses the full I don’t want to get super technical, but it uses the full capabilities of a RasPi4 for which Raspbian still isn’t caught up to.

Zelko:

So it allows us to install Maria database. And so that’s like, that was a big deal. Cause there’s a lot of catches that require some tinkering with with the database side on like myNode has to deal with it and a couple others. It was a very weird command that you had to run that I wasn’t a big fan of. So when we saw that this had that capability, we kind of jumped on there. But so yes, the, stuff that I always recommend there’s a Labist RasPi4 for a complete kit. And as even that even comes with a fan, I always recommend a fan and RasPi4 obviously and you know, your SD card, it doesn’t need to be a lot 16 to 32 gigabytes. As far as I always recommend a SSD that performance is much better than a standard hard drive.

Zelko:

But you know, I use a Samsung Evo 860. That’s my, that’s my choice. But yeah. Any, any SSD, a 1 TB I would say is gonna last you an extended period of time. And with the next Dojo release, you’re gonna want you’re gonna want a one terabyte. If you intend on using an indexer, which is like a, like a Electrum server. So they use like electrs or Samourai is going to be releasing their own, which is going to be exciting, but it, it kinda floats up above that 500 gigabytes. So if you don’t have 500 gigabytes more than 500 gigabytes, it’s not going to work for you. So yeah, I always recommend one terabyte, you know, you’re going to have it for a while. Your SSD’s last much longer than your hard drives.

Zelko:

So it’s worth investing a little bit of money into your hardware. You know, other than that, everything comes in this Labists kit. It’s $100 right now and in the U.S. And it comes with everything. And then we also have an awesome working relationship with CryptoCloaks. They make some awesome stuff. If you want to, pimp out your Dojo node, you’re running Dojo and have some cool you know, some cool Samourai logos on there. Their stuff is awesome. So I definitely recommend them. But yeah, other than that, that’s all you need cause you’re just plug and play and you don’t need you know, you don’t need a screen. We, want to work on a screen, but I’m really trying to, we had some bigger plans this year that we’re really excited about, so yeah, that’s pretty much it for hardware though.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. So with the cooling, it’s important to touch on that because I think if you just use the standard raspberry PI case, the default case, that might not really be good enough. Right. It’s ideal to have either the fan or what I often recommend is the FLIRC case. And that’s like a passive cooling basically. So that’s kind of an easy option as well.

Zelko:

Absolutely. Yeah. You have to have some sort of cooling when you’re running this cause like I said in the beginning, Dojo is a backend server, so it is, it’s definitely resource heavy. So you’re going to be hitting a lot. It’s going to get hot for sure. So you want some sort of cooling going on, whether it’s passive cooling with the FLIRC case or a fan. I’ve even heard people, I mean, when I first did it, I ran into that and I just put an actual big fan next to my PI and just let it go. But you need to have cooling on there or it’s kind of shut down on you.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And that means it won’t be as reliably running and so on, and then you might have a bad experience. So for listeners, make sure you do think about cooling for your Raspberry Pi or for your Odroid if you go that direction. And so let’s talk about how you set it up. So in the earlier days, it was just a guide and you had to just go through command line, do it all right. Nowadays there’s a more scripted install. So can you just walk through just high level, what are the steps that the listener should think through? What are the steps for Ronin Dojo?

Zelko:

So Ronin Dojo, you’ll have your Pi set up, you’ll take your SD card, you’ll put that in your main computer in your flash. The Manjaro minimal image. The latest one that’s out there, I think it’s 19.12. And then from there you’ll plug that back into your Raspberry Pi once flashed, plug that in. We do a, you have to update kinda like you would for any other Linux system where they use a, you know, apt get update, apt get upgrade but they use Pac-Man. So you’ll, and we have the commands listed on our site for people. Maybe we can put a link on there, but you just run a couple of commands to update your system. So it’s all good to go. And then from there you’ll clone our, github.

Zelko:

So you have the full repo and then you just run the Ronin script and then all you gotta do go down, hit system, set up, hit the system, set up, install Dojo. If you want to install Whirlpool as well, you can do that one. And then it will take you the rest of the way. It tells you each stop what you’re going to be doing and kinda, we set it up so that you get an experience out of it. So you’re seeing what exactly that we’re doing. We try to do a lot of you know, this is the command, this is what’s going on right now. And then it’ll do it so that users get an idea of like what’s being put onto their system or what’s working at the time. So you really, you can sit and walk away or you can sit there and kind of take a learning experience and see what’s going on. And I also try to tell users like, Hey, we document all of our scripts so that if you want to take this journey into command line, you’re more than welcome to, you know, see like what all, what all of our commands do, cause we label everything in our scripts. So I think it’s a good experience in that end. But yeah, really, once you have Ronin, the UI up, which is just a couple of commands from there it’s, I think it’s three clicks. So it’s, it’s pretty straightforward,

Stephan Livera:

Right. Yeah. So it’s, so there is a little bit of come online, but it’s very light. And Oh, also maybe just talk through what SSH is for somebody who is not used to that. Right. So you would, so the experience to them would be to SSH into their Ronin on the Raspberry Pi. Can you tell us what that is and how you do that on a windows or a Mac PC.

Zelko:

Yeah. So SSH is just your way of having that secure secure entry into your to another device on your local network. So from I use a Chromebook. So for me it’s easy cause it’s right there. I’ve terminal like right on my computer. But if you’re using a Macbook there’s actually terminal command in there that you can that you can enter. I believe it’s just the Apple spacebar terminal. And from there it’s SSH. If it’s your initial setup into, into running like the very first boot you’ll do root@ and then the IP address that your Pi4, your new Pi4 is going to be assigned to on the reverse end. You can do that in windows with putty. So putty is another one that you can use or there’s a, I think there’s like a launcher on windows that people can use.

Zelko:

It’s been a while since I ran with windows. I try not to dabble back into those, those realms. But yeah, it’s it’s generally not too hard. I think the hardest part is trying to figure out, and again we try to put all this in our, our Wiki is figuring out where your, like what your new assigned IP addresses. And a lot of times you can just find that on your with like however you view your ISP information. That’s generally how I do it. Mine kind of tells me immediately as soon as I have a new device logged in.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. So let me just explain that. Just the context of the listeners. So you have an internal network and your router is assigning IP addresses to the different devices. So your laptop and your desktop PC have been assigned an IP. So in this case, when you set up your Raspberry Pi or your Odroid with the, with the Manjaro minimal and it’s booted up and it’s turned on and you’ve plugged it in directly to your router with an ethernet cable, your router will assign that an IP. And then so later when you’re on your laptop or your desktop, you’re trying to SSH into that. And the way you tell it where to look is by saying SSH, root@ and then the IP address. So it’ll be something like one nine two.one six eight.one dot six or something like that because this is your internal IP. So just a bit of context with the listeners. And then so yeah, from there as you said, there’s a couple of commands and then you’re into the user interface for Ronin, which is kind of like an up and down and press enter sort of interface. Right?

Zelko:

Yeah. So yeah, just to rewind when you do that initial boot and I’m really a big fan of our documentation cause we put all of the different steps that you’re going to take. Cause there is the Manjaro like initial boot GUI is not very good for, for minimal. So we put all the commands and all the questions that they’re going to ask and like what you’re going to want to put for yourself as, a user. So people can really just kind of follow along on our guide. And when they do their initial setup, because like I said, we try to make sure that you’re like, it’s an easy and easy experience cause our first couple of times wasn’t very, wasn’t very easy, but after that, after that initial setup and you save it yeah, you’ll, and you’ve created your new username.

Zelko:

That’s when from there on forward you’re gonna SSH your username at and then that IP address and then, yeah. So once you’ve, once you’ve done your initial setup and you’ve installed, not even installed, it’s really just pulling the, distro. Once you’ve pulled that distro, it’s a matter of just typing in Ronin on the keyboard after your initial setup. You type in Ronin and you’re good. We will appear and you’re ready to roll. So I’ll just pull it up just to, just to do it, cause I’m a man of, I need to do it myself. Yeah. So if you’re trying to install Dojo, right? You just set everything up. You’re just going to go back into, it’s number six. It says system setups and installs as there’s an option number two, install Dojo. You click that, you can even click it with the mouse if you want to and then you’ll hit okay.

Zelko:

And then it’ll, it’ll prompt the menu for you. So it’s, we really made it easy. And from there we wanted to make sure that every Samourai user could, can go in and check all their own logs themselves. We want to make sure that you had the tools yourself to be able to figure out and troubleshoot and provide more information either to us or to other Samourai users in the telegram chat of like what issues you’re having. Because number one, the community is always there to help you. But number two, like then you start to get this idea of, Oh, okay, like this is the log that’s giving me issues or these are the issues that I have. So, and all the logs that are laid out really easy and right in front of you. We also optimized a couple of things. So when you ask for your Tor hidden address I have it.

Zelko:

So when, if you have Electrum setup or Electrum personal server setup, it’ll tell you your Tor address right there. So that way you can just copy it and then you can install, if you already have it installed, you can go ahead and connect to that as your single server for electron for your hardware wallets. And then, you know, same with your, the same thing that’s going to happen when you go to use it for, for the Explorer. So for the Explorer, it’ll pull up and it’ll tell you the same thing, right under a Tor hidden address. It’ll tell you what your Tor hidden addresses for your block Explorer that you can pull up anywhere. And then you can just go ahead and log in right there and it tells you the password that we randomize for you. And you just pop that in. There’s no username for the Explorer. But so don’t get confused. It will ask you for one. But yeah, we try to make it so it’s easy and all the information is right there for you.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, that’s great. And now let’s talk a bit about Whirlpool set up. So listeners might not now, but basically the key points here are you’ve got Whirlpool GUI, which can run on your laptop or your desktop PC and you’ve got Whirlpool CLI which can run on your Raspberry Pi. Right. And so, and now also with mobile mixing, you can mix just straight off your phone, but the recommended set up is to actually get Whirlpool CLI. And you can even control that with Whirlpool GUI. And so can you just talk us through a little bit around, you know, what that is, what why, why should we do it and just talk through a little bit around the setup on that.

Zelko:

Yeah, absolutely. So Whirlpool, I got to do the, the beta mobile mixing as well. And I think the agreed best practice is being able to do your own Tx0. You know, that initial creation of a premixed transactions doing that mobile cause you can select and pre-select whatever you want to be in there, which is awesome from there as soon as that end, cause that initial one is really fast. From there, you want your, your post mix to continuously be mixing 24/7. And that’s where that this command line version comes in handy, especially running it on a Pi4. Or you can even run that on a Pi3. But just running that alone is going to enhance your mixing experience cause yeah, it’s just running 24/7. You don’t have to worry about anything being messed up.

Zelko:

And then you add in the GUI so that you have best control over all of those mixes that are going on. So you have control over to say, all right, I want, I want 20 mixes for all of my UTXOs and post mix. Or you say, I just want three or I want to, whatever it is, you get to control that from the GUI and from your from your command line. And that’s, really where that comes in handy is that the GUI really allows it to go to the next level of control. And then it just continuously mixes on that backend server of a, your Whirlpool sitting on your RasPi4. So that’s always been my strategy and I like, it works amazing. I know your buddy Ketan was like huge on that.

Zelko:

I got around that and kind of him running on there and he was like, Holy crap, I did not realize how much better it was to run this, you know, 24/7 than it is to just keep the GUI open. So, and on top of that, just so users know the, the GUI is great, but running it on its own, it uses a lot of resources. So at least from the online computer setup, it, it really slows everything down. But if I have that the CLI set up on my Pi and I just connect to it, it really doesn’t slow anything down at all because that GUI, if you do it standalone, it runs both the GUI and a CLI all locally on your computer. And so it’s, it’s really going to use up some resources to keep both of them going. So if you want that like optimized experience, you’re going to want to do the CLI. The CLI is, it really is very easy and I can get into that if you want me to, but it kind of depends on what your users want to do.

Stephan Livera:

Right? Yeah. And so look, I think it’s one thing to think about, he is why it’s good to run these things on their own device is most people are not at the point where they can run their own server, right? And so as in like proper with a desktop server, but it’s kind of with this Ronin and that’s why I like it as well is that you can just have this Perma on always device. And because it’s a Raspberry Pi, it’s a very low power usage and most people don’t leave their laptop open all day. And even if they do, it might go into hibernation, then you might get all these different issues, whereas when you run it on the Ronin Dojo on your own raspberry Pi, and it’s just on all day, that just massively simplifies the experience and makes it so much better. And obviously for listeners, you should know the best way to use Samourai wallet is with your own Dojo. And so this is a great way to use it. I use it myself, I recommend it. So can you tell us a little bit around some of the different node products that are out there? Right. So now, recently Dojo came to myNode and I know you helped out the community member lightning sats to put that into myNode. And can you just tell us a little bit about where you see Ronin as placed with some of the other node products that are out there, such as the nodl and the myNode?

Zelko:

Absolutely. so number one, I’m a huge, I’m also a very big fan of mine. I honestly, like I, I look up to any of these other node communities and developers that are out there like I’ve huge respect for openoms who works on RaspiBlitz and me and him have talked a lot actually, like he’s one of the people that like, I mean I didn’t tell him, but I was looking at all of his scripts and his guides and that’s how I learned a lot of things. When I would get stuck, I would go to his, his scripts and you know, so huge respect for RaspiBlitz, huge respect for, a Raspibolt. And myNode is probably the best user experience that I’ve seen from any other node setup.

Zelko:

And so I was super happy that one, I could help them implement Whirlpool. I think that’s great for their users. And then now that they have Dojo, like there’s no reason that anyone shouldn’t be running this stuff. I think where it separates us though is like I said, like we are for Samourai users by Samourai users. We also, so we work directly with the Dojo development team to one catch any bugs or you know, make changes that will enhance our users experience. So we get that like first in and we get the prep way ahead of time cause we already know what’s coming down the pipeline for the next couple upgrades. So we’re always getting to to test out and implement things that will help us. And on top of that, like I think we’re, we have things that other users don’t.

Zelko:

Other nodes don’t like Whirlpool stat tool. We’ree rolling out on this next release. So you know, users can go in and calculate what their anonymity set is, which I think is great. It’s a pretty fun tool. World war gonna work on it to make it more optimized and user friendly. But it’s pretty simple. And Laurent was the mastermind behind that one. So, yeah, I think that for us, like we’re not super focused on lightning at the moment, which I think is probably the biggest differentiator, like the biggest difference between us and everybody else is that, you know, we don’t have lightning. We’re for users who you know, you’re a Samourai user, you want to make sure you have enhanced privacy, maybe you have some hardware wallets that you want to connect to your Electrum server so you don’t have to worry about leaking any information.

Zelko:

So that’s, who we cater to. We were we are working with Zeus and Evan with Zeus to if we can make it to a point where we can use maybe that doxxic change that you get from a Tx0. And we can use that in some way with lightning. Like I’ll be all for adding lightning to Ronin. But for now, like we are really focused on staying on chain, staying with that core mottos of Samourai Wallet. And then and like I said, we’re working on some cool new new stuff for as far as like our own GUI, adding in, some new stuff that I think all the Samourai users will definitely like. But that’s definitely goals for this year is to get a really bad ass, GUI going for sure.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. That’s great. I’m a big fan of Ronin Dojo also I meant to ask this earlier, but can you just tell us a little bit about Dojo Maintenance Tool because that’s something that the user will need to think about when they’re setting up and so on. And basically, I guess the high level summary I would say is you set up your own and Dojo. It will set up the Dojo Maintenance Tool. It will give you an onion address. You will install Tor browser on your computer and then you’ll use Tor browser to go to that onion address. And then there will be a QR code. And that’s where you set up a new Samourai Wallet wallet and scan the QR to pair your Samourai Wallet on your phone with your Ronin Dojo. So can you just tell us a little bit about the Dojo Maintenance Tool? What is it, why, why should we, you know, what do we do with it?

Zelko:

Yeah. So the maintenance tool is great because number one, that’s, you have to use it in order to scan that QR code rate in order to start your, to connect your wallet. And just to touch on that, a lot of people ask like, Oh, I wanna use my old wallet that wasn’t on Dojo before and I want to just put it on my Dojo now. And as the, you know, you’re going to be able to do it easier with this next release. But the real reason, the biggest reason that I want users to take away is why you shouldn’t do that, is that you know, if you care at all that your, your xPub was on Samourai’s server if you care, then you should just start with a fresh wallet because that xPub is not one address or whatever. It’s the entire xPub. So if you care, which like I personally don’t care, but there are probably users out there that they hear that story about xPubs on the server. If you care, you should just make a brand new wallet, pair that wallet to your Dojo and have all fresh never touched by anybody other than your Dojo xPub. So that’s a big thing that we get a lot of questions on that one. So I like to, I want to just throw that one out there, but so the rest of the maintenance tool, you know, you get to see your standard Bitcoin you know, your Bitcoin logs in there how like, what your uptime is. And what the blocks are at. And then you also can pull specific information. So if you want to see if a particular Bitcoin address, how much Bitcoin is in a Bitcoin address you would use it to re-scan your actual, either your xPub or an address.

Zelko:

If it’s not showing up, that’s, this is where you’re going to troubleshoot everything is from your Dojo maintenance tool. And again, all of these things are going to be super enhanced because it’ll rely on an indexer on the next release if you choose to install one. And that’ll be a lot faster because that’s what the indexes are meant for. Right now it’ll query the entire you know, Bitcoin core node to try to retrieve this information, but it’s not designed to do that. So, yeah, it’s not optimal right now. And with this next release it’s going to be super enhanced and then you’ll be able to use that full re-scanning capabilities. So that’s, that’s really the key to the maintenance tool is being able to, you know, query your Dojo for whatever information that you want.

Stephan Livera:

And so it’s also worthwhile pointing out that this is really accessible. So the cost is relatively low. Right? You don’t need to run a whole computer and it’s basically a Raspberry Pi 4, and the SSD are probably the more expensive components otherwise. And the software itself is free. Right? It’s all open source. So can you give just an idea of roughly what is the cost to run around in Dojo?

Zelko:

Yeah. I would say it’s about, it’s about $200. Also if you get a good deal on SSD, maybe less. If he can, it’s probably a little bit more and it depends again some people like to just buy all their parts separately and that could save you. So I would say it would probably range from about, from for US dollars probably it’d be about 180 to maybe $220. If you really like started to ramp it up. And then if you want to get like super cool add-ons you know, that’s, that’s obviously gonna expense. So yeah, I would say about $200 is going to be your price with an SSD.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. And then also for the users who only have Apple and they’re thinking, okay, what if I get an Android phone just full of Samourai Wallet, the typical recommendations, what are the typical recommendations that the Samourai guys will make here?

Zelko:

Well, yeah, they would be mad at me if I didn’t say a pixel 3A and then getting GrapheneOS on there.I’ll be honest, you know, they can, they can get mad at me, but I still haven’t gotten my GrapheneOS that up yet. But yeah, the, the pixel 3A is the cheapest option and it’s 100% worth it. I’ve heard, you know, we have a lot of lists of different phones that people can get a Nexus, there’s a Nexus phone that’s probably the cheapest. I think it’s like 60 bucks and and it works great if you’re only trying to use it for Samourai. You know, so if you’re, if you’re looking to switch or you’re looking to do this and comes from it coming from a person that made this switch out of iOS, like it’s 100% worth it. Like you start to realize how much more freedom you have on your phone. Once you make that jump and this wallet ha, like, I don’t think I’ve met a user who said I’m switching just to get Samourai Wallet. And then they said, Oh, I regret that decision. I have yet to meet one. Maybe they’re out there on Twitter somewhere. They can shout out if they if they’ve done that and they are super upset that they got an Android, but I don’t think they exist.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. So, yeah, and that’s, I mean for me, I was an Android user all along anyway, so not a problem for me. But basically if you are interested and you want kind of the cheaper option, maybe look for a Pixel 2 refurbished and try and find something on eBay or whatever. And if you’ve got the money and you can afford a mid range level phone Pixel 3A is probably the best choice. And that’s kind of the Samourai crowd favorite, if you will. So let’s talk a little bit about some of the Bitcoin privacy techniques and collaborative transactions as well. So with Samourai you can collaborate with another Samourai wallet user to make your transaction more private. And this is known as the cahoots theme I guess. And then the actual product names a Stonewall X2 and stowaway. So can you tell us a little bit about your experience using those to improve your privacy?

Zelko:

I’m a huge, huge fan of of doing all these cahoots and cahooting with other people is, what I like to call it. Because it really opens your eyes to how awesome this software is and like the, what the Samourai team has put together, it, it really blows your mind. Especially stowaways I think stowaways are probably the craziest things that I’ve ever seen in Bitcoin. Because for stowaway if I’m sending from sending you know, let’s say 0.1 or 0.01 Bitcoin it’s going to make a transaction. That one, I can’t tell that 0.01 went, like when you look at it at the end you don’t even know how much Bitcoin was sent. So I’ve had people do that I’ve done stowaways with and and I can’t, I have to ask them like before looking, cause they don’t want to tell me how much is being sent.

Zelko:

I’d have to ask him like, how much did you just send me? And then eventually it pulls up and I can see it, but you can’t look at the TX ID and determine how much was sent. And I think that is the coolest. And it also looks like a normal transaction. Like when you go to put that, if you were to put it in you know, Blockstream’s block Explorer, it tries to tell you what type of transaction is. It’ll tell you, it’s like this is a normal transaction. It gives you a little warning saying there’s too many outputs, but you’re like, Holy shit. Like they don’t know that this is a coinjoin. And then on the other side, you know, with Stonewall X2, you have an actual, you get to do your own coinjoin. And so for all the people that are set out there and they’re like, Oh, I don’t want to pay a coordinator fee.

Zelko:

And you know, that’s up to them. And I think that’s fine, but you can do your own coinjoin. And on top of that you can use that to just pay somebody else. So if you want to send that to any other address, you know, if me and you are in cahoots and I want to pay a third party, I can do that. And it can be a coinjoin so no one knows what’s going on. And I think that’s like, you know, these tools are just like mind blowing that we have them, you know.

Stephan Livera:

Yup. And have you got any tips in terms of best practices with doing those? So sometimes it can be a little bit difficult if you don’t have enough UTXOs or pieces of Bitcoin in your wallet to be able to, for the wallet to be able to craft or construct that transaction or compose that transaction because you don’t have enough UTXOs. That’s one example. And I’ve noticed personally it’s easier in person because you can just QR scan back and forward. But it is possible to do it online as well. But basically it involves passing back and forward the payload either through the QR image or through the text payload. So can you just tell us a little bit about your experience with that?

Zelko:

Yeah. So prior to mobile release my experience was a little frustrating because I didn’t know all the rules. There cause there was, it was harder to do. And a lot of that came with the more stable release after mobile mixing. They, definitely made a fix that like helped a lot because it was had to do with you refreshing your UTXOs, but so like my general rule is I never spend never spent, never go to make the transaction more than half of what I have. And then, so if I have if I have one Bitcoin in there maybe I’ll do like 0.04 and then it’ll create those transactions for me. And now that you can do it in post post mix, it’s like, it’s super easy. But yeah, it was frustrating. There’s still, there’s still things that need to be smoothed out.

Zelko:

Like I won’t, you know, I won’t kiss up too much to the Samourai team. I know that they’ll continue to make it better, but there are times when it’s hard, but generally if, cause I haven’t gotten to do it in person unfortunately. But you know, if a QR, if sending someone the payload to somebody doesn’t work, if they send me the QR code, I can generally scan it and it works fine. And yeah, there’s times when it’s frustrating and I think that’s just cause the rules kinda are hard to follow. And then if your UTXO’s aren’t refreshed or aren’t you know, fresh anymore because say that you’re say you just got a new mix in your Whirlpool and then you’re trying to do this from post mix, then it could have messed up your actual transaction.

Zelko:

So for me, I’ve had really, really great experiences where I can do all five jumps with no problem. And then I’ve had other times where, you know, it didn’t work exactly. But it’s a software that is cutting edge. So what I was trying to tell people is that like this is not, you know, stuff that’s been around for years and years and that, you know, is going to be perfect. You know, you have to have a little patience with it. And, if you have issues, there’s always community members that are there to help you out. But yeah, the QR scanning back and forth is super easy and I have not had any issues with that. And I’ve done one that was, I think we said it wasn’t like combined, almost like a hundred UTXO’s into one transaction. So that was pretty crazy. But it’s, I mean, it’s awesome. Like there’s really no better Bitcoin experience than doing your own coinjoin, but like manually, like how cool is that, you know, like, when do you get to do that?

Stephan Livera:

Yeah, it is very impressive. I mean, yeah, I think it’s really it’s just the class leading privacy tool set. And so can you tell us a little about building the community now? So you’ve got the Ronin Dojo telegram chat, and you’re always in there helping people getting set up. How has that experience been for you?

Zelko:

So the community is, honestly, I mean, not even even obviously with Ronin Dojo, but going back to Samourai, like that was why you know, I spend a lot of hours, I spend a lot of hours helping people. And I know a lot of people appreciate it, but I do that cause I love the community and like I wouldn’t have been able to learn any of this stuff had it not been for that community. So it only feels fitting to do, to reciprocate. There’s really there and like once you’ve joined and you know, you get your feet wet with this community. Some of them are a little rough around the edges. You know, there’s one in particular that I’m thinking of, but he knows who he is, but I, you know, it’s like a new family for me. You know, I really could not, I cannot like fathom a different experience.

Zelko:

You know, I joined the zap team, like the zap slack group and stuff and you know, everyone’s helpful. Like I don’t want to bash them, but this community feels like family. And they always will help each other. You know, they’ll rag on each other too. But you know, they have, no matter whether it’s my questions or anyone else’s, there is always someone there helping. And so I try to spend as much time as I can, helping other people as I can. Especially with obviously with Ronin cause that’s my project. But even if it’s not, you know, if it’s myNode, if it’s any, just a normal user wants to switch over from, you know, a different wallet and they want to learn like I’m 100% trying to help them because I, you know, I really believe in this project and I think that Samourai Wallet, you know, is light years ahead of all the other on chain wallets. So that’s like their community is just, top Tier. My opinion.

Stephan Livera:

Yeah. that’s well, I guess that’s a great place to finish it. Have you got any closing thoughts for the listeners? Any tips for them on how they can improve their Bitcoin privacy or why they should care about their Bitcoin privacy?

Zelko:

Yeah. you know, especially with the way that the world’s moving you, if you’re not starting with your privacy now, like you, you really need to start looking at it because I’m really a firm believer that if you’re not, if you’re not starting to think about your privacy and how to maintain good opsec and you know, starting with starting here is a good point because it’s easy to set up a private Bitcoin experience, you know, whether it’s with Ronin or whether it’s you just running their own Dojo and starting with a fresh wallet trying to not, dox yourself and trying not to you know, KYC yourself when you’re buying Bitcoin. Ergo is a big fan of that. It’s, if you can start making those habits now when these regulations start to get more and more intense, which is inevitable in my opinion, you know, you’re going to be way ahead of the game. So if you’re not doing those things and you’re not taking back your privacy, now is the time to do it. And it’s even easier with with Ronin and it’s even easier with Dojo. So, you know, take back your privacy and, and start making Bitcoin private again. Make every spend a coinjoin.

Stephan Livera:

That’s awesome. And so listeners make sure you go and find Zelko online, on Twitter and in the Ronin Dojo telegram chat room or the Samourai Wallet chat rooms as well. And there’s the Ronin Dojo Wiki and you can find the links there. So Zelko just where do you want to listeners to find you online.

Zelko:

Oh man. Definitely on telegram I will forever be holding up in the Samourai telegram groups and and the Ronin telegram groups. They can also get me on Twitter. Same thing, BTCxZelko. Just send me a message. I’m always here to help people out. So feel free to yeah, to stop by and say hi.

Stephan Livera:

Awesome. Well, thanks for joining me.

Zelko:

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. Stephan.

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