SLP341 Zelko & Din – Ronin Dojo & Tanto

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Zelko and Din join me to talk about updates with the Ronin Dojo project for Samourai Wallet users. We chat:

  • Where the project started
  • FOSS project ethos
  • Thoughts on VC funding
  • Privacy wallets
  • Bitcoin node project evolution
  • FOSS business & project
  • Tanto Hardware
  • Supporting Specter and Sparrow

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Sponsors: 

Stephan Livera links:

Podcast Transcription:

Stephen Livera:

Zelko and Din, welcome to the show.

Zelko:

Thanks for having us, man. We’re super excited.

Din:

Yep. Thank you. Super excited too.

Stephen Livera:

So we’re doing an update on Ronin Dojo as well as chatting about Tanto. So just for listeners who are new and maybe they haven’t heard as much about the privacy aspects of Bitcoin. Zelko, Can you give us just an overview on the project and where it’s at today?

Zelko:

Of course, yes. So Ronin Dojo is a privacy-focused, completely free and open source node project. And our whole goal and aim is to give you all the tools as a Bitcoin user to be as private as possible. It has all of your own tools, whether it’s with hardware wallets using Sparrow or Specter, or whether it’s with Samourai Wallet using Dojo—which is our main focus—and then also obviously Whirlpooling. And Whirlpooling can be done now via either Sparrow or Samourai Wallet. So we’re super excited to have all these new capabilities. And our latest release actually just updated all of our versions, Electrs (Electrum Rust Server) and Specter got updated ,as well as Dojo. So we’re pretty excited about everything that we’ve got coming, and then all the stuff that we have coming in the future—we’re definitely really excited. It’s a really cool project. And I think the best part is that with Tanto—now that we started to do pre-sales—we’re finally able to fund ourselves and keep ourselves going as a FOSS project, and not have to rely on these big VCs to come in and give us direction. So that’s pretty exciting. And then I brought with me our hardware guy, Din Djarin, not to be confused with the actual Mandalorian—so he’s here. Din, go ahead and introduce yourself.

Din:

Hello, yeah I’m Din. I’m originally from Switzerland, and I have this typical electric engineering background, where they usually learn in a apprenticeship when you are 16 years old. And yeah, I just ended up as an automation engineer for Swiss and German companies the last 15 years in Asia for a commissioning engineer in semiconductors in the display industry. And yeah, that’s very short about myself, yeah.

Stephen Livera:

Excellent. And so just for listeners, if you are new, when you want to act more privately in Bitcoin, part of that involves learning to run your own Bitcoin node and connect your wallet—and ideally use a wallet that has privacy-enabled techniques—and connect your own wallet to your own Bitcoin node. And so this is part of what the Ronin Dojo project is helping you do, if you are willing to go down that pathway. And so Zelko, perhaps you could just give an overview: what are the main pathways for people? So I suppose you could just explain for people if they want to build their own versus if they want to purchase the product. Could you just spell out what it looks like for them?

Zelko:

Yeah, sure. So we have a couple different routes now, a lot more than we used to. We have the Tanto, that you can buy from shop.ronindojo.io. And that’s a plug and play: you literally just plug in all the parts that you need, which is right there: your power source and your ethernet, and it’ll load right up into the new Ronin UI. And then otherwise we’re also selling the exact same setup as a DIY kit through @minefarmbuy, and he’s actually going to be distributing worldwide. So anybody that wants to pull the trigger and they want to save a little bit of money, they can buy through him. And that comes with all of the ROCKPro64 parts, which is our recommended hardware. That is a single board computer, for people that don’t know. It’s a little bit more powerful than a Raspberry Pi, which is famous in the Bitcoin world. But it’s still our flagship, and what I would recommend. And then we also support users being able to run pretty much any single board computer that they have—we support with our images. Some have a little bit more technical hardware, power issues, but we’re always here to help people get through the process. And so yeah, we try to eliminate as many barriers as there are for people to transition over. So yeah, you can do it with a Raspberry Pi, you can do it with a ROCKPro64, you can do it by buying a Tanto straight through us, or you can buy a DIY kit through @minefarmbuy. So those are our main options right now.

Stephen Livera:

Fantastic. And so for listeners you might be thinking, Well, some of the main options are to either run a node on your PC, on your box, or to use a dedicated machine for this. And this is where the ROCKPro64, the Tanto, et cetera—these options come in a little bit. And so Din, I know your focus is on the hardware. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how you came up with—or what your approach is around the Tanto from a hardware perspective?

Din:

It was actually a really long journey. So everything started like that. As I said, I’m this automation engineer, and I’m always used to building things which just need to run 24/7 and they have to be rock-solid. So 2 years ago or so, I could finally find some time to get my hands on all the node projects. It was like, Okay, now I have some time—I need to have my own nodes. And I bought probably every single board computer, a couple of Raspberry Pis, and then also the ROCKPro64. And I bought all the cases and started to play around with all those different implementations—Umbrel, myNode, and of course also Ronin Dojo. And then I had my little box. Usually it’s always like a plastic case with a noisy fan and some wires. And I was like, Ugh, okay, I need a node, but I want to have something very solid. And I went to the local electronic store market—and at time this was pretty easy to pick up—and got some aluminum boxes from the shelf, was doing some drawings for myself, brought it over to a local tool shop and told them like, Hey, can you cut this out? I need this block because I want to have a passive cooling and this and that. And then I had my little customized aluminum block box node. So then I was like, Okay, that’s nice now. And then I posted it on the Telegram groups and sure enough, Zelko was there like, Hey, what’s that? What are you doing here? And it all started like this, yeah.

Zelko:

Yeah, I’ll be honest: the funniest part about the whole experience was being like—I think at that point in our time for Ronin, me and S2 kind of started this whole thing—some people would be like, Hey, we want to help, want to contribute. And then they would come in and they would help for a little bit. And then they’d go back to their lives. That’s the nature of the FOSS community. So Din Djarin came in—of course, I’m a Star Wars nerd, so I was like, Oh, I know that guy—Mandalorian. Cool. I was like, I like him. And then he said, Oh, I want to make a metal case for you guy—would you guys be open to that? I was like, Yeah. I mean, I guess—sure man. I didn’t have my hopes up. And then within a few weeks he came back with these designs and drawings and I was like—this was not what you guys see now as Tanto—but I was still blown away. I was super excited and hyped up. And I think for the Ronin team, it turned our project from a hobby that we might be able to support ourselves, to something that like, Hey, we might be able to do this for the long haul. We might be able to actually provide something that the Bitcoin community needs and is missing, which is an actual nice product for a full node. And it’s not to say that the other ones aren’t nice, but this one is just a totally different feel. And so once I saw—especially the Tanto—it was like, We’re onto something. Yeah, it was all downhill from there. This guy has been 10 steps ahead of the game. So it was pretty funny. I just didn’t believe that it was going to actually come to fruition.

Stephen Livera:

Right. And that’s the difference between a FOSS project. And I guess it’s like building up a business around the FOSS project here. And so it might be that some of these projects start off as really just a side hobby thing. And over time, if there is enough community interest and growth around it, then people can start to get paid back for that work that they’re doing that they’re contributing into the open source commons, as it were.

Zelko:

Yeah, that’s a really good point. That was our intention from the beginning: we wanted to make things easier for Samourai users, so we built something that was good for us, and then other people started using it. And that led us into how we decided to do our product rollout, is that we don’t want anybody to be forgotten. We remember when—me and us two—we remember when the red beast—or the Nodl Dojo—first came out, and people getting priced out. We remember that. And it’s nothing against them, they had a really good product. They did what they thought was right, and I definitely don’t knock them for it at all. But that was what started Ronin. And so we didn’t want to forget that we’re a FOSS team whose whole idea and identity revolves around the community, and revolves around everyone being involved and no one getting priced out. So while we do have expensive products and we’re going to have expensive products, we’re also always going to have free software. We’re always going to be able to support different devices. We might not have the time to support in as much detail on all platforms, but we’re always going to support it. We’re always going to allow it to run for the tinkerers and the people that want to do it. And yeah, that’s why we have the free software. We have the 3D printed cases for that community. We’re going to have the DIY kits that you can just buy straight from @minefarmbuy, or you can piece it together yourself. And then obviously the plug and play Tanto. And then we’ll have another top of the line product that we’ll be shipping out later on this year, hopefully. But yeah, it’s a big difference I think.

Din:

I also just want to quickly champion this FOSS aspect. So for me, the whole timing was just right for me too, because I just got off of a project and I had time. And I really liked when Zelko and his team started [off] so really serious about it—Hey, can you do this for us? I was like, Oh, I’m not a software engineer, but I can do hardware. So it looks like it’s my time now to contribute to an open source project, to Bitcoin. As a Bitcoiner, I also saw my chance to give something back. And this is what I could actually do for this community, and that was really appealing for me, too. And especially in the Ronin Dojo project, I could tell: there is no revenue stream, they don’t have any funding it looks like, so okay—I have time. I can do that. And I really saw it more as giving back to the Bitcoin community as a whole with my skills. And before I was always thinking, Oh, you need to be a coder.

Stephen Livera:

I just want to go back to one comment earlier as well just around the structure or the business, how to make it work. Now, I did an episode recently on VC funding and Bitcoin, and obviously there’s “Crypto VC,” and then there are Bitcoin-focused VC investors out there. In your case. Zelko, could you tell us a little bit about why you wanted to avoid that pathway? Maybe why it was not the right choice for you?

Zelko:

Yeah. So I wouldn’t say that we necessarily were anti-funding, because I don’t think that’s really the case. Especially once we linked up with Din and we had this legitimate product with a legitimate future, we were like, We needed funding, and we knew it, but we did have some of our own personal money that we had put in and was keeping us afloat. We knew that we could do it ourselves for a bit. Our biggest problem is—because we did reach out to a couple people, but so many VCs in the Bitcoin space that we talked to—the first question that we get asked is, Okay, so you guys support Lightning, right? No, we don’t support Lightning. And they’re like, Oh okay, well it’s in the roadmap? And we’re like, No, it’s not at the moment. It’s not something that we’re focused on right now. We’re the privacy node. That’s what we do. And so I would say that that’s been the major turnoff. And I know that there’s going to be people out there that want to get in on this project. They’re going to see it, it’s going to get their hands on [it]. But at the end of the day, we are very selective on who we want invested into our project. We want people who are on board with our vision, and not people that want to try to steer or tell us what to do. At the end of the day, if we could even do it without any VC money at all, because we’re able to sustain ourselves, then that’s even better. But if we did need VC funding, it would have to be someone that aligns with our ethos and aligns with our mindset, which is definitely against the grain. And I know that for the Bitcoin community, but I think that’s what the biggest piece was, was that as a node project without Lightning—and we’re the only ones that don’t have Lightning—I think that’s been a point of contention, if I had to guess.

Stephen Livera:

I see. Yeah, totally fair. And so as I understand it then, as you’re saying, you would be open to it. It just needs to be the right person or right group of investors with the right mindset, or at least an aligned mindset in terms of the privacy focus. And I suppose that’s not impossible. I mean, obviously it’s a different project, [but] Samourai Wallet itself has other outside investors, but without having Lighting. And so maybe that’s something where Ronin Dojo as a project aligned with the Samourai Wallet team, then maybe that’s also an angle down the future. I wanted to also talk a little bit about the hardware aspects of this. So Din, probably this is for you. I know that, depending on the way the node has been set up, or how long that node has been running, there can be reliability issues. And I know Zelko, you’ve probably got things to add on this as well, but let’s start with you, Din. Can you give us your thoughts on why ROCKPro64 as opposed to Raspberry Pi as your preference?

Din:

There were different aspects. ROCKPro64 was really nice because we could use M.2 SSD storage, which could connect to this x4. So connected, it had this native PCI connector. And that for sure enables you to sync up the blockchain for the initial block download much quicker.

Stephen Livera:

So Din, if you could explain that just for listeners, what is the M.2 SSD? Why is that a superior choice than some of the alternatives?

Din:

Yeah. So the Raspberry Pi guys, they usually use the external USB 3.0 connector and just run things with an external hard drive. And when you have an internal connection straight into the board, you have a quicker bus—it just goes faster. But that said, this is just an advantage you have in the beginning. Maybe you save 1 to 3 days until you are ready to go. So we also saw that when you use these traditional 2.5 inch drives, you need more space, you have more cable. It just gets way more easier for design. And the ROCKPro64—I don’t really know actually why they chose the ROCKPro64 as the flagship. It is more powerful, but the lucky thing was actually that during this chip shortage, surprisingly the PINE64 company—also those guys, they produce the ROCKPro64—but they don’t have any supply issues. Whereas, you see the Raspberry Pis, they even increased the price. And when I ask my friends back in Europe, they’re always like, Oh, it’s out of stock, it’s out of stock, and you don’t have the problem. I can’t explain actually why this is, but that’s also a nice thing. What else? Zelko, do you—

Stephen Livera:

Yeah Zelko, let’s hear from you on any of your thoughts around hardware selection.

Zelko:

Yeah. So we originally decided to make our flagship the ROCKPro64 mostly because it was faster, it had more computing power and more RAM by default at the time. But the computing power, the CPUs, that was really the seller for me. And then what he keeps talking about with the PCIe, these connectors that are available on a ROCKPro64, it’s the same thing that you have on a desktop computer. And so these NVMe cards or M.2, it’s just a really small stick. So (1) it saves a lot of space, but (2) it’s also extremely fast. It’s the next generation. So most people are used to seeing that 2.5 inch SATA III SSD, that solid state drive, so that’s already faster—it’s a lot faster than the hard drives that we used to see, but the next one is extremely fast. So the ones that we have in the Tanto, the M.2, I want to say the average that we’re getting is—for the entire block download—is about 72 hours or less. Generally it’s between 48 and 72 hours depending on how fast your Internet is. So it’s a huge performance increase. And so having that capability was massive. And then it just fell into place with ROCKPro64 with PINE64 being really good as far as taking care of the chip shortage and stuff like that. But yeah, it’s just a really beefy piece of hardware, and it’s really not that much more—it’s about equivalent. If you were to buy a Raspberry Pi 8GB RAM version, it’s about the same price. So in my opinion—I could add RAM. Most people might not know that, but you can utilize that solid state drive as an ad swap from there and just increase your overall RAM capability. I’m not that worried about RAM. I’m more worried how fast my computer can run, and how much computing power I have. So that’s why we went that way.

Stephen Livera:

Yeah. So just for listeners who are following along and maybe you’re not as familiar, I think if you were to look at this space a few years ago, a common thing would just be to have a Raspberry Pi—and some people were just doing it even with spinning hard disks, right? So really like the cheap hard drives. And then over time, I think we’ve seen a shift there happen because of things like the speed of processing, the growth in the size of the blockchain, the ability to download and sync the Bitcoin blockchain quickly, and also to stay up to date. So let’s say if we’re using Samourai Wallet and we’re using Whirlpool, we’ve got lots of UTXOs (unspent transaction outputs), and those coins are continually needing to be remixed. And so having hardware that’s more suited for the task—I think that’s essentially the evolution we’ve seen. So as you were saying, we’ve gone from people using Raspberry Pi 4 and Raspberry Pi 4 with spinning hard drives, to then upgrading to SATA, the 2.5 inch. And now we’re talking about the next evolution, which is trying to use the more advanced NVMe M.2 SSD style, in order to give better performance and arguably better reliability. So if you guys could just comment a little bit on your thoughts there around the reliability, the uptime aspects, comparing this new generation versus some of the older stuff?

Zelko:

I’m laughing—I’m thinking about back in 2016 and using that Raspberry Pi 2. I’m not going to date myself and say that I’m this 2013 OG or anything. But I remember using a Raspberry Pi 3 and using a regular hard drive and following the guide. The instructions were like, Yeah, it takes about 2 to 3 weeks to download the blockchain. I was like, Holy crap, I guess I’ll just come back and check on this later. It’s amazing to see that hardware curve that we have. And I have no doubt that everyone is going to be following in the same steps. That’s the curve, right? As technology increases and the blockchain gets bigger, technology increases with it, and it gets cheaper as more space is required. So yeah, it’s really cool to see where we’re at right now, and being able to download the blockchain and people getting upset when it takes more than 4 days and you’re like, If only you knew the real pain, the real struggle. But I’m like, Come back to me when you’ve done 45 IBDs by yourself just for fun. But yeah, that’s my opinion. I think it’s just really remarkable to see how far we’ve come. But Din, what’s your thoughts on that?

Din:

Now about your crush about M.2 NVMe SSD. The spec says they last for 1,500,000 hours. So I just did the math where they calculate it’s 170 years or something. I mean it’s crazy, right? An M.2 NVMe SSD is super reliable, and they don’t really break. And that’s the nice thing about it. You are just operating on a layer one solution that has actually no need anymore to have a RAID configuration because those drives—they don’t break. Probably your board will break, but not the drive. So that’s a really cool thing about this technology, yeah.

Zelko:

I quickly did the math on that. Say, if you did 1 million hours, that’s 114 years. So the blockchain will expand past that at some point, eventually. I don’t know. If Lightning takes off in layer 2, we’re good, right? Then the blocks don’t get bigger? I don’t know. Is that how it’s supposed to work? No, I guess not, huh? I guess I’m just kind of being an asshole. That’s my bad. Geez.

Din:

Oh, but they are good drives, so you don’t really need to worry that they break. So that’s the cool thing about those.

Zelko:

It’s okay. That’s always why Matt Odell gets to say that the blocks aren’t full anymore—it’s just Lightning adoption. So he’s winning that battle.

Stephen Livera:

Well yeah, I think what we’ll see is there will be some commerce from people who shift to other layers, and that might include Lightning, that might include other things. But that will also make it more affordable for people who are staying on-chain. So that is a benefit there for the people who are just on-chain only—at least for now.

Zelko:

Honestly, it’s a win all the way around. If we make on-chain fees and that fee market never comes to fruition, I think everybody wins. If you want to be on-chain, you can be on-chain. If you don’t, you don’t. We’re all working to the same goal, right? Whether you’re a hardware wallet guy or if you’re a Lightning guy or privacy CoinJoin on-chain person, we’re all trying to make Bitcoin better. So that’s what’s important to me.

Stephen Livera:

Yeah. So bringing it back to that. So as we were saying around the hardware, what people might have done in years gone by, or if they were using a Raspberry Pi as opposed to a full box, they might have had more issues if they were trying to support lots of users. So for example—to use our friend Matt Odell’s term, the Uncle Jim—if they’re trying to be the Uncle Jim for their friends and run the node for their friends, but then if they’re trying to do that off, say, a Raspberry Pi, or a more low-powered device, that can get more difficult, particularly in the case where those users have a lot of CoinJoin and remix going on. Because then, there’s a lot of coins that that machine now has to track. And it’s got to obviously search through its memory and it’s got to keep all of that updated and keep rescanning. Or if there is rescanning, then that can be more problematic, or a little bit more difficult. So if you guys could comment on that and where you’re seeing that today, in terms of using the more advanced hardware and being able to support deeper wallets, let’s say?

Zelko:

Yeah. So for the hardware, that’s why that computing power is so important, right? If you’re going to be an Uncle Jim, you definitely want to be running something like a ROCKPro64. Or depending on how many people that you are running it for, I would even say that having a dedicated desktop is probably the most realistic option. Something with a lot of RAM, a lot of power, as much power as you can get when it comes down to it. If you were going to be hosting 10 active CoinJoin users or more, 10 active Dojo users, you definitely want those people to all have fast uptimes and everything else. But for us, if you’re supporting four or five, six people, I haven’t seen any issues with ROCKPro64, and I haven’t really tested the upper threshold—I probably should have—but I will definitely do that before the next show. It’s definitely not something that I’ve seen issues with. And I have some super deep wallets. I’ll be very honest: I keep my wallets active, and I probably have at least four or five myself, and I haven’t had any issues with the ROCKPro64. So it’s a really solid piece of hardware, and hopefully we see a trend towards that, now that the Raspberry Pi has had that moment of flaw. It was the tinkerers’ board, but really when it comes down to it, the fact that that chip shortage hit them so hard and prices went up so high—I’d like to see a shift to something more powerful. And it just makes transitions easier. Even if people transition away from us, if Umbrel or myNode—myNode actually does support ROCKPro64. But if everyone supported the ROCKPro64, and someone wanted to leave our project, I’m okay with that. Now they don’t have to buy two different devices just to run two different nodes. Or, if they want to transition from one project to us, that’s even better. It does suck when people are like, I want to run the flagship, but I have to wait until I can afford it. It sucks when you hear that, but that’s also what makes me happy that we do support so many different platforms.

Stephen Livera:

Excellent. And Din, anything to add there?

Din:

The ROCKPro64 is a really good choice. And yeah, as Zelko said, buying the Tanto doesn’t mean you just can run Ronin Dojo. MyNode works too. And I also know that the BTCServer guys, they have a project called hack(0), and they also use the ROCKPro64 actually as their main testing node device. I mean the ROCKPro64 is well known on the other projects too. It’s just the whole buzz was so big about Raspberry Pi because Umbrel is Raspberry Pi-only.

Stephen Livera:

And so the other point that was interesting is around switching between different node implementations. So if there’s RaspiBlitz, Umbrel, myNode, Ronin Dojo—how are you thinking about that? Is that—and maybe this is more of a software question so maybe Zelko you’re the one to ask—how are you thinking about that idea of making it possible for people to transition between different projects? Is that something you’re thinking about, or is that not really a goal?

Zelko:

No no no—it’s definitely a goal. One of our main back-end devs, he’s actually implemented and pretty much finished the back-end development for this node migration script. And we’ve also been working with the Aaron Dewes, or I don’t know if I pronounced him right. Sorry, Aaron. But he actually hit all the FOSS node guys up and wanted to work on something together, and that being one of them, because we’re all in the same boat where we’re like, Hey, it’s crappy for users as a whole if they want to switch. And then they have to redownload the blockchain. We all write our scripts to just delete. If it’s not in a specific directory, like a specific location on your hard drive, it’s set to just delete it and then start fresh, when that doesn’t need to be the case. So that’s something that we have been working on, and we’re hoping for the next either—probably not this release, which should be by the end of the month—but most likely the following release, it’ll all be done. It’s just hard bcause you need testers. To test that out perfectly, I have to reinstall myNode or RaspiBlitz or Umbrel or whatever, and then switch over to Ronin. So it’s a little bit more of a tedious testing process, but yeah we’re pretty much we’re right there at the end, so we’re excited to be done with that as well.

Stephen Livera:

Yeah. And it’s interesting that the Bitcoin community—at least the FOSS Bitcoin community, the free open source community—is focused on this and is even thinking about this, because typically what happens with software is people get locked in or it’s known as “vendor lock-in.” And so in this case we’re seeing the projects actually try to cut against that and go against the idea of vendor lock-in so that people actually do have a choice. And they’re just competing as projects on their own merit, but in an open source way. Competing but cooperating, in a sense.

Zelko:

Yeah. That came down to the mutual respect that we all had for each other. I think last year, between the big debates and stuff that we all had, I think a lot of mutual respect came out of it. We already had that mutual respect, but it really grew to the next level. And even for some of the other guys I know, the Start9 Lab guys, I really like those guys despite the fact that they’re not FOSS. Like Matt Hill and his whole team I met a couple times in person, and they’re really good guys. They’re just like—they made a business decision. So even with them, we’ve helped each other on both sides. He asked me about the ROCKPro64 and I’ve asked him some different business tips and stuff that he had insight on, so it’s cool. Just because you don’t have a FOSS license doesn’t mean that you don’t have to respect somebody. But I think it’s really the approach that everybody has: how willing you are to work with other people and how willing you are to share stuff, because that’s really what it comes down to with FOSS. You’re trying to share your code, you’re trying to share work together to benefit the community as a whole. If you don’t care about the Bitcoin community, what are you really doing? You’re just selfish. If you care more about your profits than you do about the community as a whole, then you’re kind of a dick. But yeah, I don’t know. It’s been cool to see everyone work together, for sure.

Stephen Livera:

Yeah. That’s great to see. And so just maybe if you could spell out what it looks like for customers? Let’s say they purchase a Tanto or they install Ronin Dojo, let say they purchase the parts and they set it up. What does it look like in terms of the interface and getting set up to pair your mobile phone Samourai Wallet with your Ronin Dojo?

Zelko:

Yeah. So it’s super exciting. The process—which, man, it used to be super long. So now with the release at the end of the month, it’s going to be: turn on your node with the image on there. If you have the Tanto it’s already going to be in there. And just for the record, for anybody that bought a Tanto and wants to not trust us and verify, which is totally cool, you can unscrew the back, reflash that device yourself, and then go for it. Just for the record. So yeah, you plug it, you start up your device, and then you log in to ronindojo.local, or your IP address. HTTP—your IP address. And your Ronin UI will be up and running for you. You’ll create a new password. And from there, you’re in. And it’s going to automatically start downloading Dojo and the blockchain for you. If you’re a brand new user, it’s already going to start downloading Dojo for you—you don’t have to do anything anymore.

Stephen Livera:

So for people who aren’t familiar, you’re basically plugging this into your local power and your network, obviously, and then it’s downloading. And you can connect to it off your—like you are interfacing with it on the web using your laptop or your computer. And you can then check the settings and do things on there. And also, obviously, pair your Samourai Wallet on your mobile phone. So that’s the high-level there. In terms of managing things like, let’s say you need to do a rescan, or let’s say you need to do different things. Can you talk through what some of those processes look like?

Zelko:

Yeah, absolutely. So we have a roadmap for just the UI as a whole. But for this release, what you’re going to be able to do—so on your main dashboard, number one is it’s brand new, totally revamped. Hopefully everyone really likes it. I love it. I think it’s sexy, but that’s just me. So you’re going to be able to see the status of Dojo, the Bitcoin Core, if it’s a hundred percent synced up or not, how many transactions are in the mempool? What block height you’re at, when the last block came in, all that stuff is going to be on there. And then your uptime of your actual system, so how many days or hours your actual device has been left on. As far as maintenance and stuff that you can actually do with it—so we have the XPUB tool. So if you are trying to scan in an XPUB from an existing Samourai Wallet, you’ll be able to plug that in right into your mobile phone. You can copy it from there and just put it over, or you can use whatever you want to copy and paste it into the UI. So you’ll be able to check the XPUB and then rescan it and it’ll import it for you. We have the transaction tool, so you’ll be able to check transaction IDs. And then if it’s not this release, it’ll be next release, but you’ll be able to utilize Boltzmann with a visualizer, which is, for people that don’t know what the Boltzmann calculator is, it’s what kycp.org, knowyourcoinprivacy.org, it’s what they use, and what OXT does for it. It’s what they used for calculating entropy and how private your transaction was. So specifically what we’re going to have implemented is a visualizer for Boltzmann. So you have a transaction, you want to see how many links you have, or how private it was—you’re going to be able to see it from your own Ronin UI. So that’ll be pretty cool. And then you can rescan blocks and pretty much do everything that you need to with your Dojo right here. And you can check your logs. You can copy and paste your logs straight from the UI. You can even send offline transactions. Updates will come straight through the UI now. It’ll pop up on the top when it’s ready for you to update. And for those people that are cold storage or offline transaction people, if you have a signed transaction, you can actually pop that in. You can copy the hex format and you can broadcast your transaction from your node instead of trusting someone else’s node. And yeah, you can go in and change your passwords and all that kind of stuff right from there. And again, we’re going to have more features that we’re going to roll out for this UI in the following months, but this is step one—a very exciting step. Now I wanted to be able to show you, Stephan, but you blocked that ability, so that’s okay. Next time.

Stephen Livera:

Yeah, we’ll do that another time, because this one says audio only. And with the support for Specter and Sparrow, could you just touch on that as well? So for users of Specter Desktop, or Sparrow, what can they expect to see?

Zelko:

So yeah, we just updated to Specter 1.2.7 which has been a really awesome update. And again, you can access that via local or via TOR. Your credentials will show you exactly where to go. And the other one is Sparrow, which I’m super excited about. And I am a little partial towards Sparrow—obviously they implemented Whirlpool, Craig is an awesome dude who’s doing really cool stuff—BIP47—everything that Samourai users have been saying like, Why has no one else implemented this stuff? And finally it happened. So it’s pretty cool to see. But yeah, with Electrum Rust Server 0.9.4, we’ve seen really good results. I know there’s been a heated debate between Electrum Rust Server and ElectrumX. And as of right now, the downside to ElectrumX is just how long it takes to actually index everything, so we’re exploring different options. And it is significantly faster once you have it up and running. Instead of 10 to 15 minutes, it’s 7 seconds. But yeah, it’s something that we have to look at as far as a full user option, if that’s something that we want to look at. But yeah, we’re excited. And then from the Tanto perspective: Din, did you want to just quickly touch on the design piece? A lot of the hardware stuff—Din’s main focus is the design, right? The design of the Tanto, the box, the inside, how everything is laid out. So I wanted to highlight him real quick on why you chose that design, the design the way it is on the outer box, and how that related to Sparrow and Specter.

Din:

Yeah. As the software guys have their roadmap, we also have the roadmap for the Tanto. So when you look inside the case, you see a lot of stuff which are like holes and screws. We are working on an upgrade. There are some requirements from the software guys who say, We want to do this, we want to do that, and we are working on it. And there will be some hardware upgrades that Tanto buyers can actually really utilize that thing. From the hardware design at the moment, it’s actually pretty clear that the whole case is a whole heatsink. So that means you don’t have that fan anymore. You have less mechanical parts that actually could break. And we just kept it very simple. Also the power and reset button—usually you don’t want to touch by accident. So you have to go in with an Allen key when you want to do that. And the light indicator is a request. We actually got it from a Matt Odell. He said like, Look, I just want to see, like when it’s blinking—it’s not ready. And when it’s on—when it’s shiny—I know I can use it. And it’s as simple as that, and we just need it, right? Keep things simple.

Zelko:

Yeah. The light thing is really cool. I’m not going to lie: as a normal person, I like the LED light, especially when we get it to where it’s going to be programmed that when you get a Whirlpool mix, it’s going to flash or do something cool. Or maybe one day we’ll have it set to like Tony Stark. And Jarvis is going to tell you that you have a Whirlpool mix, or some secret codes so that you don’t like dox yourself that you got a Whirlpool mix—like something cool. That’s the goal. We want to make privacy sexy, and that goes a [long way], even with the LED light. It goes, right?

Stephen Livera:

Awesome. Just around, if anyone’s got questions around support—I know this is something you previously were offering. Is that still the offering now, in terms of people who want to pay for premium support? Or how does support work for people who might be looking to either purchase the product or set it up for themselves and get support?

Zelko:

Of course. Yeah. So we have a model right now, which is: we have a silver and a gold premium support. And so what we do with that is gold is two months, silver is one month. And you get that dedicated—I don’t want to call it handling, because it almost sounds belittling. I don’t think it is because I was a handheld person. But yeah, it’s that dedicated one-on-one time, or as much time as you need. So yeah, you get two months for gold, one month for silver, and that’s our current model. We are looking to actually do something brand new. It’s going to actually be able to open up to the community a little bit more, and it’s going to be like a bounty-type option that we might do, or one-on-one 30-minute calls, et cetera. The whole idea with support is that you want users to feel like they’re important, because they are. I spent many hours, especially in the beginning of my journey, that’s how I got to the knowledge base that I did, was through helping other people. But if I didn’t have other people help me, I wouldn’t have been able to learn anything that I did. So with a good support model, it’s all about making sure that the people feel like they they’re getting what they paid for. And we have a lot of people that actually just pay for support just to help pay our program, help pay for us to keep the lights on. So we appreciate all the people that have done that. And we haven’t finished ironing out all the details on our new support model but when we do, it’s going to be really cool. And my partner S2, he’s all in on making that plan. That’s his baby. But yeah, so we do have those support models right now, and you could pay with Bitcoin. It’s actually the only way that we accept support payment—thank God. Fiat is terrible.

Stephen Livera:

Yeah. That’s cool to see, so that’ll be good. I think those are probably the key questions I had for you guys, but if you had any closing thoughts for listeners and maybe if you could spell out for them why they should consider Ronin Dojo, consider using CoinJoin and privacy techniques. And of course, where can they find you?

Zelko:

Cool. Hey Din you want to go first?

Din:

The closing on my side—I’m super thankful for that once we launched it after Christmas, they just started to buy it and I was like, Wow, super, super thankful for that, even [though] we are still building our Ronin Dojo website brand new with all the details and stuff. I’m really looking forward for a super exciting year, because we do have a roadmap on the hardware side, for sure. And the Tanto is the middle tier. There will be a flagship called the Katana, and we also want to create something for really a nice entry point, that nobody is left out. That’s actually my goal, and my task for this year, yeah.

Zelko:

And yeah, so to jump off what he was saying, we appreciate all the support that we got with people buying these things. It’s a real eye-opener to realize that we’ve worked so hard and put all this effort between Din with his case design and all the hardware pieces, and then us being able to actually finish the software, do everything that we’ve like envisioned, and to have the community support us the amount that they did was amazing. And so we really appreciate everything that the community has done for us. And I remember—I know that, Stephan, you were there in the beginning—you saw where we started. So I’m hoping by the end of the month, when you see this next one, you’re going to be like, Holy crap. These guys have come a long way, because it sure feels like that. And we really wouldn’t be here without the community. We really are a FOSS team who, legitimately, if we didn’t have people come help us, I don’t know where we would be. We’d probably still be learning a lot of code and still just passionate about privacy. So yeah, support our FOSS team, whether that’s steel plates or whether that’s running a full node, buying a Tanto, or just coming in and chatting with our team. It’s all about giving back in some way or shape or form. That’s what Bitcoin’s about. And that’s what free and open source software is about—it’s about giving back. So yeah, I appreciate you having us all on, Stephan, and we’re excited to see how all the feedback is from when people get these awesome devices in their hands. They’re going to love it. And hopefully everyone gets excited too.

Stephen Livera:

Fantastic. All right. Well thanks very much for joining me, Zelko and Din. And listeners go check out ronindojo.io. Thanks guys.

Din:

Thank you very much.

Zelko:

Yeah. Thanks man.

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