Is An XMR Version of Nunchuk Wallet Technically Possible?
I’ve read about secret sharing as a means of doing multisig in Monero, and I know services like Haveno & RINO implement 2-of-3 wallets as a service (for exchange escrow and shared custody respectively). I’m interested in a different sort of implementation, one that doesn’t rely on a third party host.
Nunchuk.io, for example, develops a BTC wallet that allows multiple users to collaboratively create multisig wallets & share custody of bitcoin. They can sign/approve transactions via an integrated messenger (which is third party hosted, but doesn’t technically need to be afaik). This has multiple use cases, but it interests me primarily as a trustless escrow service between individuals.
As a non-programmer, I’m curious if anything about XMR secret sharing prevents the development of an equivalent application for Monero. Haveno and RINO have their own use cases, but I’d be more interested in something that can work between individual users without any third party company/service/platform.
The fact that multisig was not widely used yet, was indirectly related to the unfortunate CCS Wallet Incident, which happened a few months ago, as well.
@ErC (ErCiccione), a contributor, commented elsewhere a few days ago:
This is a bit of a dog biting its tail. Multisig was shipped and has been live for a long time. Nobody really used it, so it ended up being unstable and full of problems, but that came out only relatively recently (couple of years ago) when services started to build on it.
People are now saying, “If multsig had been used…” “should have” “could have” (Hindsight is 20/20 😢). Anyway, fluffypony replied, “when it reached a level of maturity (this year? late last year?) it should have been prioritized.”
We can expect that multisig will be now more prioritized and to be carefully tested and tuned, soon to be available more generally, if not right now. So perhaps the answer to your question is, “No, but maybe soon…”?
Multisig is like the gpg of email, best practice in theory but rarely used due to usability.
AFAIK it’s still only available via the CLI version of monero wallet?
@UncleIroh @Saki RINO claims to use it for their enterprise shared custody service:
And Haveno is supposed to be using it for escrow:
https://github.com/haveno-dex/haveno/blob/master/docs/trade_protocol/trade-protocol.md
I foolishly assumed this meant it was mature enough to implement more broadly, but I guess not.
You can try out their claims. I havnt tried multisig their myself jusy tried a normal account ages ago. My only wish is to have email as an option only or some other network id. Xmpp/nostr/monero. They could use monero for spam protection? Also im not sure how multsig with other parties work, is the email shared with other participant? May be good idea to make that private too…but how to monitize i dont know…
@xmr_unlimited I’m not terribly interested in RINO… they’re a third party service, not a piece of software so it doesn’t fit my use case. The fact that I need to register & sign in to even try it out is a big turn off.
What I am curious about, though, is if they’ve refined XMR multisig at all in developing their service, and if so whether they’ve pushed those improvements upstream or not.
Im pretty sure participants can get their funds out without rino if they saves all their keys
@xmr_unlimited That’s probably true, but fund security/access isn’t my main problem. I don’t like having to go through RINO to begin with. I’m not very familiar with multisig, but I believe they at least have a Private View Key, and partial access to the Private Spend Key. Their own FAQ admits they can see outgoing transaction info (this can be mitigated by the receiver always using clean subaddresses of course, but RINO still has the info regardless).
The use of email and accounts also means RINO stands to have access to metadata about user activity, especially if they use convenience features like fast sync & cross-device access. I’d prefer a multisig solution without the middleman if possible.
@Saki Interesting, thank you. Was the CCS wallet not using multisig the reason for the breach, then? I haven’t followed the incident in detail, I wasn’t sure what allowed the attacker access in the first place.
Nothing is sure. It might be skilled attacker(s), it might be simply bad opsec, or it might be an inside job. Several people think and say that we need to minimize trust via mltisig (in retrospect, this seems so obvious but that’s just hindsight).
@japananon @monero monero-wallet-rpc can manage multisig wallets, but I’ve never tried it: https://monerodocs.org/interacting/monero-wallet-rpc-reference/#make_multisig
This functionality doesn’t seem to be available in Monero GUI.
@silverpill @monero The only user-facing implementations I could find were Haveno (proposed) and RINO (existing), but both are tethered to their respective services, and not useful in a more general sense.
I’m just curious if the lack of GUI implementation has a reason (technical limitations etc), or if it’s just never been attempted. Nunchuk’s design is great for BTC multisig, and an XMR equivalent would be useful.
@japananon @monero Apparently it was never attempted. What is so great about Nunchuk, integrated chat?
Given that monero-wallet-rpc provides CLI interface, GUI shouldn’t be difficult to build. I think it can be even built by integrating multisig into an existing chat or social application.
@silverpill @monero The integrated chat is part of it, but not the whole.
Multisig is usually pitched as a security or shared custody feature, but a niche I think is underserved here is the use of multisig for trustless escrow between individuals. Haveno’s implementation is integrated too deeply into their exchange platform to be useful independently, and RINO is an enterprise service focused on shared custody, so neither is exactly fit for that purpose.
I talked about Nunchuk in a video last year:
https://peertube.anon-kenkai.com/w/bSyQSapGr7QUaXwiJHUPLV
I went into it in more detail there, but in a nutshell what I like about it is how it incorporates all the necessary tools for trustless escrow in one package. You can generate wallets collaboratively via the integrated chat, discuss the terms, fund the wallet, and disburse funds without needing to fumble between multiple tools.
Since my main focus is providing tools for artists, I can see how such a thing would be very useful for things like commission work. But it can certainly be used for other things too, of course. It’s an otherwise purpose-neutral tool so it’s easy for anybody to just pick it up and use it for whatever purpose they want.
Nunchuk is BTC only, and it can still be useful, but an XMR version would suit my needs even better.
@japananon @monero I could build one, sounds like an interesting project.
There was an old system based on BitMessage, but it is unusable and unmaintainted: https://www.getmonero.org/resources/user-guides/multisig-messaging-system.html.
Someone is trying to build I2P-based version with an integrated marketplace: https://github.com/creating2morrow/neveko. It doesn’t look very usable either, and developer is trying to do everything at once, which is usually a bad idea.
I would make it as a standalone tool that can work on clearnet and can connect to other software
@silverpill @monero The existence of a tool like this would be extremely welcome. In my opinion, at least, but I’m sure a lot of other people would find it valuable once they discover it.
@japananon @monero I talked with some devs and learned about plans to add GUI for mutlisig to Feather wallet. But it is not clear when this will happen because Monero multisig still has experimental status (its security is not proven).
I could try to build an alternative wallet app, but there’s a risk that Feather will add it first and my effort would be wasted.
Also, this just popped up in my feed: https://monero.im/post/3925
