seth, Author at Foundation

Foundation Updates: June 2024

Posted on July 9, 2024 - 10:36 am by seth

⏱️ June 2024: See you in Nashville

Welcome to our June edition of Foundation Updates! May was a quiet month publicly for us, so we’ve focused on two big releases and jumped straight to our June update instead today. May and June had us “heads down” on a huge new release for Envoy and continuing work on our top secret master plan 🤐

This month we’ll be at Bitcoin Nashville (July 25th-27th), so be sure to stop by booth 211 to get try out Passport, buy directly via cash, card, or Bitcoin, and show your friends and family how approachable and powerful Bitcoin wallets can be!

Now, let’s catch up and dive into what else has been happening at Foundation HQ. 🫡

Product Updates 🔥

Envoy v1.7.0 – Buy Bitcoin, directly

Buy Bitcoin straight to self-custody, directly in Envoy
- We’ve partnered with Ramp to integrate a seamless Bitcoin buying experience directly into Envoy. No need to leave the app, no annoying address copy-paste, no hassle.
- Every sat you purchase gets sent directly to the Envoy account you choose, without ever needing to manually copy-paste addresses.
- Buying directly to Passport? You can easily verify the withdrawal address with a simple QR scan via Passport.
Redeem BTCPay vouchers directly in Envoy
Countless improvements across the board

Read more 👉 Envoy version 1.7.0 is now live!

Passport v2.3.1 – New wallet connections

We also released Passport v2.3.1 in the last few days of May, adding in wallet connection flows to three new wallets among other improvements and bug fixes:

Added Theya integration to Passport’s wallet connection options.
- Learn more about Theya.
Added Zeus integration to Passport’s wallet connection options.
- Learn more about Zeus.
Added Coinbits to Passport’s wallet connection options.
- Learn more about Coinbits.

Read more 👉 Passport v2.3.1 is now live!

The latest in Freedom Tech

Brady Noah wrote up a fantastic review of Sparrow Wallet (one of our favorites), taking into account the recent loss of Samourai Wallet functionality. The conclusion?

“Sparrow Wallet is a beloved Bitcoin software wallet that recently took two big hits to its functionality thanks to the legal prosecutions coming down on the founders of Samourai Wallet.

Despite recent events, however, Sparrow is still an excellent Bitcoin wallet that you should be using if you regularly interact with your Bitcoin holdings. From customizable custody setups to UTXO consolidation, there are still plenty of great offerings that make Sparrow Wallet worth using.”

Read it all on Freedom.Tech 👉 https://freedom.tech/sparrow-wallet-still-powerful/

Meet the Foundation Team 👥

Discover where our team has been making moves this month! We’ve been busy connecting with podcasts and events, sharing insights and experiences you won’t want to miss. Dive into the highlights below!

Seth For Privacy and Bitcoin QnA went on the Watchman Privacy podcast at the beginning of May to cover the latest in the Samourai Wallet indictment and fallout.
Bitcoin QnA covered all things Bitcoin in the latest Bitcoin Monthly episode for the Ungovernable Misfits podcast.
We sponsored the Oslo Freedom Forum, giving away 50 Passport’s to freedom advocates, activists, and dissidents in attendance.

Product Review and Photo of the Month 🤩

Each month, we select one of our users’ reviews and one photo from social media to feature in our newsletter. Your experiences and stories are what keeps us building, and we’re grateful for your ongoing support. Keep sharing your moments with us, and you could be the next one in our newsletter!

Photo:

Green Candle spotted a Foundation exclusive t-shirt at a Bitcoin meetup 👀

Review:

We take our customer support seriously, and we love seeing it pay off with our customers feedback! See how Mark appreciated our tech support in this month’s review:

What we’re working on 🛠️

We have a polish release for Envoy in the works, picking nits and continuing to make Bitcoin even easier to buy, hold, and spend from anywhere.
We’ll be attending the Bitcoin Nashville event July 25-27th, with a bigger booth than ever! Come visit us at Booth 211 to try out Passport in person, show your friends how it all works, or learn more about what else we’re building.

Conclusion

That wraps up our April edition of Foundation Updates – thank you for joining us, stay tuned for more next month. In the meantime, for daily updates and insightful content you can:

🐦Follow us on Twitter

🟣 Follow us on Nostr

🌐 Subscribe to our newsletter

💬 Join our community support group on Telegram

With Love from all at Team Foundation 🧡

Envoy 1.7 – Buy Bitcoin, Directly

Posted on June 19, 2024 - 8:35 am by seth

Envoy 1.7 is here, and it’s one of our biggest releases ever. Today marks the start of a new chapter for Envoy, one where you can not only intuitively and powerfully manage and store your Bitcoin, but starting today you can buy Bitcoin directly into self-custody with a few simple taps, more easily redeem Bitcoin vouchers from both Azte.co and BTCPay servers, and discover new peer-to-peer, no-KYC exchanges.

One tap from Envoy’s home screen and you’re ready to start your sat-stacking journey.

Buying Bitcoin directly to self-custody

At the core of this update to Envoy is a brand-new integration with Ramp, allowing Envoy users to seamlessly purchase Bitcoin with debit cards, credit cards, Apple and Google Pay, and more directly to their Envoy accounts. Combining a powerful on-ramp with the native privacy and security features in Envoy makes for an unmatched experience.

❌ No copy-pasting addresses
❌ No address reuse
❌ No need to leave the Envoy app
❌ No data collected by Foundation
✅ Easy, one-click address verification with Passport
✅ Automatic tagging w/ note of purchased coins
✅ Sats sent straight to self-custody

It’s easier than ever to purchase Bitcoin, but if you have questions on how all of this works please dive into our docs here.

Choose an Envoy account, set an amount, and setup a Ramp account.

Partnering with Ramp

We’ve worked hard to find a partner that would limit data collection as much as possible, prevent us from accessing any information about Bitcoin purchases, and allow the entire purchase process to happen directly in Envoy, settling on Ramp. While Ramp is still legally obligated to collect identifying information in order to sell Bitcoin to users, this ensures that we at Foundation not only do not (and cannot) collect any information about our users in the app, we also cannot get that information from Ramp directly even if we wanted to.

As Ramp serves a broad number of countries across the globe, you may see some slight differences in information required or fees depending on what country you select when buying Bitcoin. If you want more detail, please refer to their documentation here.

Additionally, Ramp manages the fee structure for purchases in Envoy, with varying fees based on the method of payment, the amount, etc. As partners with Ramp, Foundation will take a small fee as a part of the overall Ramp fee. For more information on Ramp’s fee structure, you can find details on their help portal here.

Confirm email, choose payment method, and you’re stacking sats.

Redeeming vouchers

We’ve also spent time in Envoy 1.7 improving and expanding our Bitcoin voucher support, adding the first of it’s kind BTCPay voucher support — before voucher support is even live in BTCPay 👀. We’re extremely excited to see vouchers added to BTCPay, a fantastic open-source Bitcoin-centric point-of-sale system, and have our own plans of how to leverage BTCPay vouchers immediately when they’re released.

We also have best-in-class support for redeeming on-chain Azte.co vouchers, making Envoy the perfect place to redeem those vouchers straight into self-custody (or even cold storage via Passport). One QR code scan and… done!

Discovering peer-to-peer exchanges and Bitcoin ATMs

Last but not least, we’ve added a simple way to discover new peer-to-peer exchanges and Bitcoin ATMs. These present powerful ways to buy and sell Bitcoin without having to give over personally identifiable information. These are powerful tools, and ones that we know many in our community are passionate about. As a first step we’ve added in simple links out to some of our favorite peer-to-peer exchanges along with an easy-to-use map to find Bitcoin ATMs near you.

We have longer term plans to build in native peer-to-peer exchange integrations into Envoy, but those are a bit trickier technically (and legally) so keep an eye out for news on that down the line 🫡

Conclusion

We can’t wait to hear how you all find the new Buy Bitcoin feature in Envoy 1.7, and we’re glad to be able to make it easier than ever to purchase Bitcoin without ever giving up custody of your funds. We view self-custody as a non-negotiable in Bitcoin, and will continue building out tools and products that make self-custody easier, more approachable, and more powerful than ever before.

Want to read the full release notes? You can find them below on our blog: Envoy version 1.7.0 is now live! | Foundation

Now we’ll get back to work and leave the Bitcoin buying to you 😉

Envoy version 1.7.0 is now live!

Posted on June 19, 2024 - 8:11 am by seth

We’re excited to announce that the latest version of Envoy – 1.7.0 – is now published on all your favorite mobile platforms! To download it, simply visit our download page or check for updates on your platform of choice.

Please note that there can be a significant lag from publishing to general availability due to Apple App Store and Google Play Store review policies and delays.

What’s changed

Envoy 1.7.0 makes it easier than ever to buy Bitcoin straight into self-custody without ever leaving Envoy. We’ve added the ability to buy using fiat, redeem Azte.co and BTCPay vouchers directly into Envoy, and find the best Bitcoin ATMs and decentralized exchanges as well.

And best of all – Foundation never has access to any information about your purchases at any point in the process. Our policy of protecting user privacy continues to be at the core of what we do, and that carries over into our new Buy Bitcoin feature. If you want to dive more into the Buy Bitcoin feature itself, you can do so on our companion blog post.

We also want to say a special thank you to all of our amazing community who recommended improvements and found and reported bugs, as we were able to incorporate much of that feedback into this release! We’re immensely grateful for users taking the time to do so 🧡

For more details on each of the changes, keep reading below!

New Features

Buy Bitcoin straight to self-custody, directly in Envoy
- We’ve partnered with Ramp to integrate a seamless Bitcoin buying experience directly into Envoy. No need to leave the app, no annoying address copy-paste, no hassle.
- Every sat you purchase gets sent directly to the Envoy account you choose, without ever needing to manually copy-paste addresses.
- Buying directly to Passport? You can easily verify the withdrawal address with a simple QR scan via Passport.
Redeem BTCPay vouchers directly in Envoy
- The BTCPay team have been hard at work building a unique voucher system into BTCPay which will be out soon, but we’re such big fans we couldn’t wait for full release.
- As soon as BTCPay vouchers are released to the public, you’ll be able to simply scan the QR and redeem straight into Envoy.
Envoy is now available in Portuguese! 🇵🇹
Added support for Signet and Esplora nodes
- Signet is a unique Bitcoin testing network that is often far more stable than testnet, so we’ve added support to make testing and educating on Bitcoin via Envoy easier.
Added Norwegian 🇳🇴 Krone display to Envoy

Improvements

Migrated to using our own Mempool.space instance.
- We were hitting rate limits and other minor issues with the mempool.space public instances, so we’ve deployed our own instance and will now be using it by default for fee rates.
Pairing a renamed Passport will now update the name of that Device in the Devices tab in Envoy
Pairing a renamed Account on Passport will now update the name of the account in Envoy
New Fee Overspend warning in Envoy
- When you go to send a transaction that spends more than 25% in fees, Envoy will now warn you to be sure you’re aware.
Scanning a BIP21 QR code with a label will automatically add that Label to the Notes section of the Envoy transaction
Improved the way Envoy handled pasting addresses in the Send screen to make it a more fast and smooth experience
Notes will now carry over from the original transaction to the Boosted or Canceled transactions, should you Boost or Cancel any transaction.
Long pressing the address in the transaction details view will now automatically copy the address to clipboard
New toast implemented that should help troubleshoot backend connection failures
Envoy’s connection to the backend node has been hardened, connection stability improved and downtime should be drastically reduced
Envoy will now show a new line in Activity and a toast when a new version is available
Added a timeout for the PIN/Biometric authentication
Hiding a balance in an account will also hide its corresponding transactions in the Activity view
Envoy will now warn the user sooner if they try to overspend, instead of waiting for a valid address to be pasted in
Added the option to select which coin to spend from in order to Boost if the original transaction’s change is not enough
Improved the behavior and UI when entire tags are locked
Improved the Android Firmware download process to improve file writing to SD card
Added new screens that explain why Boosting a transaction failed
Minor visual improvements across the board
When a transaction doesn’t generate any change, envoy will now display “No Change” instead of “0 sats” in the transaction review screen
Boost option will now be grayed out if there are not enough funds to boost a transaction (like when sweeping your wallet, for example)
Minor visual improvements in the Learning Center search bar
Minor visual improvements in the “To:” bar in the sending screen
The Seed Import using QR is now more resilient and will not break if there’s non-space characters between words in the importing QR
Improved the way tags are displayed in the Transaction Details screen
Improved Spanish and Catalan translations
Minor title centering issues fixed for Spanish
Minor visual improvements in Learning Center and Activity lists
Improved the hit area for menu items, making it easier to press the item you aimed for
Minor improvement in the way the seed words are displayed
Updated Twitter’s logo to X
Loading the transaction review screen is now smoother and more fluid
Canceling transactions is smoother and more fluid
Updated Flutter to the latest version, 3.19.1
Users can now add a clearnet node and connect to it via tor

Bug Fixes

Fixed a UI bug where sometimes the Passport version would display “loading” in the Devices screen instead of the actual latest version
- Note: This would only happen immediately after the first ever Passport pairing
Fixed a rare issue with touch targets on iOS
Fixed a minor issue where if the user selected coins too fast the UI could break
Fixed an issue where LAN connections wouldn’t be permitted when tor was enabled
Fixed an issue where Boosting self-sends would display 0 sats in the review screen regardless of the amount being sent
Fixed a minor bug in the Firmware download flow where the Try Again button would become available before it should
Fixed a visual bug where the selected amount would not follow the display improvements recommended by Bitcoin Design standards
Fixed a visual bug where if a Tag had multiple coins inside it, scrolling could display the toggles outside the display area
Fixed a minor issue where users could not go “back” if they accessed the new wallet creation screen from the “+” icon in the Accounts menu
Fixed some screens where users with bigger fonts would not be able to scroll
Fixed a minor issue where users with bigger fonts could see an abnormally small QR code when pairing a Passport
Fixed a minor issue with how the comma button would behave in some edge cases and some locales
Fixed an issue where repeated words would be excluded from the seed quiz in the deletion flow
Fixed an issue with the filtering of the learning center where it would sometimes not filter as expected
Fixed a minor issue where after deleting an account you would land in the backups menu
Fixed a bug for users with many accounts, occasionally forcing their accounts list back to the top when scrolling if a balance refresh happened in the background
Fixed a small issue where some long blog titles could be cut off
Fixed an issue where on first Passport pairing flow a screen belonging to another flow was displayed
Fixed a minor issue where a close button behaved in an unexpected way
Fixed an issue where in some circumstances Passport Boost transactions wouldn’t display a confirmation screen
Fixed a visual bug for some iOS users where the lock screen would show an odd aspect ratio
Fixed a bug where under some specific circumstance Magic Backups wouldn’t properly restore the testnet or taproot toggle status if the original wallet had it
Fixed an issue where boosting from Passport would sometimes fail
Fixed a bug where sometimes the users could get stuck in a firmware download infinite loop

Verifying Envoy on Android

If you’d like to take the optional additional step of verifying Envoy binaries on Android, follow our guide: Verifying Envoy on Android

Passport version 2.3.1 is now live!

Posted on May 28, 2024 - 1:52 pm by seth

We’re excited to announce that the latest version of Passport firmware – 2.3.1 – is now live! To download it, simply initiate the update from Envoy to be guided through the process.

WHAT’S CHANGED

With this version of Passport’s firmware we’ve added connections to Theya, Zeus, and Coinbits, updated dependencies, and made reproducible builds more resilient to upstream changes.

For more details on each of the changes, keep reading below!

NEW FEATURES

Added Theya integration to Passport’s wallet connection options.
- Passport users can now use their Passport directly in Theya’s fantastic new multisig service!
- Learn more about Theya.
Added Zeus integration to Passport’s wallet connection options.
- Zeus is a powerful open-source Lightning wallet, with the first direct hardware wallet integration in the space. Zeus v0.9.0 will allow you to directly open and close channels to and from Passport, without the need for any additional transactions to a hot wallet.
- Learn more about Zeus.
Added Coinbits to Passport’s wallet connection options.
- Coinbits is an all-in-one app and service to make it easier to buy, spend, and save Bitcoin. They have recently added hardware wallet support and are featuring Passport as their go-to recommendation!
- Learn more about Coinbits.

IMPROVEMENTS

Updated dependencies, including rust-secp256k1.
Improved the way upgrade errors are handled.
- Starting with v2.3.1, any upgrade failures will report an error indicating where the problem originated, instead of just freezing in the completion circle.
Updated all references to foundationdevices.com to our new site, Foundation.xyz.

BUG FIXES

Improved the resiliency of reproducible builds in Docker.
Fixed some false warnings being reported when compiling.

VERIFYING, REPRODUCING, AND INSTALLING PASSPORT FIRMWARE

If you’d like to verify and install the latest version of Passport manually, you can follow our guide on the topic here: Firmware Update support page

If you’d like to take the additional step of testing the reproducibility of Passport’s firmware, you can follow our guide on the topic here: Reproducibility Guide

Foundation Updates: April 2024

Posted on May 9, 2024 - 2:26 pm by seth

⏱️ April 2024: Beyond the Halving

Welcome to our April edition of Foundation Updates! This month was filled with excitement as we joined hands to celebrate a significant milestone in the Bitcoin space — the Bitcoin halving.

Now, let’s catch up and dive into what else has been happening at Foundation HQ. 🫡

This Month at Foundation

#21toHalving 🎊

As we bid farewell to April, we’re thrilled to reflect on the incredible journey we embarked on together with 20 other teams on our #21toHalving collab. A huge thanks to all 20 teams — from lightning, gaming, hardware and software wallets, to education and media outlets. Your participation showed the diversity and strength of the Bitcoin ecosystem & community.

Every day brought us together with giveaways that showcased the best of Bitcoin. We gave away numerous prizes, ranging from hardware wallets to sats, Bitcoin gaming rewards to swag.

The grand finale was our Twitter Space event where we gave away a 1.05 million sat prize. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to each and every person who joined us on this remarkable adventure. Until next time, thank you for being a part of our community!

Product Updates 🔥

Envoy v1.6.2 is here 🎊

Envoy now has drastically improved handling of varying display or text sizes, especially abnormally large display/text sizes.
- As Envoy has gained more users, we’ve noticed an issue where those of you using larger display or text sizes can have issues with buttons being unable to be accessed, especially when setting up Envoy for the first time.
- We’ve gone through Envoy with a fine-toothed comb to better handle when users have set their OS to use larger display or text sizes and respond appropriately.
Envoy now uses our new Foundation.xyz domain for all services. Older version of Envoy will now automatically use redirects from foundationdevices.com -> Foundation.xyz.

Read more 👉 Full Envoy Release Notes v1.6.2

The U.S. Department of Justice ramps up anti-privacy actions

In a whirlwind two weeks the U.S. DoJ has rapidly escalated their war on access to financial privacy with a cohesive campaign, all kicking off with the indictment of the two founders of the fantastic Samourai Wallet. In the wake of this indictment, Bitcoin privacy tools and Lightning service providers have felt the need to pull out of the US or shut down entirely, with Wasabi Wallet shutting down services on June 1st and Phoenix Wallet pulling their app from the U.S. app store.

We eagerly await the return of Whirlpool and Samourai once their names are cleared and charges are dismissed, and have committed to keeping the Postmix extension in Passport.

Note: are you a Samourai Wallet user looking to recovery your funds? We wrote an article on Freedom.Tech that takes you step-by-step migrating to Sparrow Wallet. Read more here.

Meet the Foundation Team 👥

Discover where our team has been making moves this April! We’ve been busy connecting with podcasts and events, sharing insights and experiences you won’t want to miss. Dive into the highlights below!

Our Head of Strategy and Marketing, Seth For Privacy recently joined @bitfinex to delve into the world of self-custody using our Passport device. Discover how we’re championing freedom through advanced security and easy accessibility. You can check it out here.
Bitcoin QnA joined in on the Ungovernable Misfit podcast.
Seth For Privacy and Bitcoin QnA joined the What Bitcoin Did podcast with Peter McCormack, breaking down the Samourai Wallet indictment and the repercussions already being felt throughout the space. Watch the full episode here.

Product Review and Photo of the Month 🤩

Photo:

Awesome pic of the passport thanks to @olvelez007 😍

Review:

What we’re working on 🛠️

We have multiple new wallet integrations in the works for Passport, and are close to releasing an open beta of v2.3.1 with them included!

Conclusion

That wraps up our April edition of Foundation Updates – thank you for joining us, stay tuned for more next month. In the meantime, for daily updates and insightful content you can:

🐦Follow us on Twitter

🟣 Follow us on Nostr

🌐 Subscribe to our newsletter

💬 Join our community support group on Telegram

With Love from all at Team Foundation 🧡

Envoy version 1.6.2 is now live!

Posted on April 25, 2024 - 2:50 pm by seth

We’re excited to announce that the latest version of Envoy – 1.6.2 – is now published on all your favorite mobile platforms! To download it, simply visit our download page or check for updates on your platform of choice.

Please note that there can be a significant lag from publishing to general availability due to Apple App Store and Google Play Store review policies and delays.