Unnamed Monero Wallet development

Hello! I'm mrcyjanek and I'm currently working on the Unnamed Monero Wallet (short: xmruw) that aims to be as portable as possible and as close to wallet2_api.h as it is reasonably possible.

However, this project got much bigger than I initially expected and resulted in a project that is huge in size, but also has really large portability capabilities, after fighting for a couple days with Wayland implementation on SailfishOS I (with the help from Mister_Magister and NotKit) managed to run the first cryptocurrency wallet natively on SFOS (that is available on the app store of that os). More details and the origin story can be found in a blog post announcing the wallet.

I'm developing xmruw with a few critical points in mind:

• There should be no database responsible for any of the monero-releated functions - so I won't accidentally do something that shouldn't be done.
• The app should be as close to wallet2_api.h as possible to eliminate things like overly complex state management as something that causes issues.
• Privacy should be prioritized - no external services are contacted in the app, and if there ever happens to be some external feature it will be opt-in in settings with an option to route entire traffic through Tor.
• Security is also prioritized - not only by minimizing the attack surface but also by providing features such as stealth mode (inspired by Samourai wallet)
• UX is the most critical of them all in my opinion - without the right UX, not many users are going to use a wallet, so it is my responsibility as a developer to make the wallet available on all platforms and to be appealing to users.
• As a mobile Linux enthusiast I'll also do my best to offer secure monero wallet solutions for owners of non-Android and non-iOS mobile devices

About

I've decided to take the simplest path from wallet2_api.h to the actual wallet UI, so instead of forking m2049r/cake implementation I've decided to use dart:ffi to call the native functions - this made a lot of code unnecessary, and the part that was still required was mostly generated - so I call that a huge win. But not without it's own cost - I had to write a wrapper for wallet2_api.h that would provide C headers instead of C++ - which meant writing a bunch of boilerplate code and implementing a couple of dart/flutter libraries, that gave birth to the foundation of the wallet

Unnamed Monero Wallet (xmruw)

Website, Gitea, GitHub, Downloads

Features of the wallet include:

• Sending/Receiving monero
• Online/Offline wallet modes
  • With URQR and file exports for Android/iOS
  • With clipboard-based exports for QubesOS
• Embedded Tor support
• (soon) Embedded i2p support ¹
• Stealth mode (fake calculator app that opens wallet if the correct pin is provided)
• Multiple account support
• Coin control
• Signing / Verifying of messages
• Custom themes
• Advanced settings
  • Performance analysis tool for the wallet2_api.h functions called
  • Debug information that makes development easier
  • Configuration options to opt-in to experimental features (such as background sync)
• OpenAlias resolving
• Backup/Restore
• Historically accurate currency conversion done fully offline
• And all of the "obvious" features such as transaction list, subaddress list, wallet locking, QR code scanning, etc.

Scope of work

While working on Unamed Monero Wallet, here is a non-comprehensive list of the things I want to accomplish in no particular order, as it doesn't make sense to separate some things.

• Expanding compatibility of monero_c to all platforms that I have access to (Linux (glibc+musl), FreeBSD, iOS, MacOS, Windows) in an easily-reproducible way (single script and a docker environment)
• Making xmruw available for all platforms (and I do mean all platforms) and in app stores (including play store, self-hosted f-droid repository, apple app store, .deb, and .rpm repository).
• Implementing features desired by users, currently this includes
  • periodic sync (via background-sync) to provide seamless experience, no matter how frequently the app is actually opened
  • merchant mode
  • many UI/UX improvements/changes (some of more important ones: make seed offset and its role more obvious, better backup mechanism, time-lock warn, automatic node selection)
• Work on documentation (this will be a significant task on its own, but the goal is to allow anybody to integrate monero no matter what language/framework they are using by using monero_c/monero.dart).
• Fix issues that were made along the way
  • Bytewords entering an infinite loop when incorrect text is passed in
  • No compatibility with Feather / ANONERO in offline mode due to lack of CBOR encoding
  • Not cross-platform QR scanner ²
  • Bad UI on desktop (not that it's bad, it is just mobile-first)
  • and more, if found when developing
  • sending fixes to relevant peers and upstream

Milestones

Given the nebulous nature of development, I would prefer my milestones to be time-based. I prpose a milestone completion and subsequent payout once every month (after services rendered).

In addition to the above features mentioned in the scope of work, I propose an additional deliverable of a weekly report so my progress can be verified.

Payment

I'm proposing to work for 20 hours/week for 40$/hour at a rate of ~125,14$/XMR (according to open prices between 2024-02-17 and 2024-03-01 (date of writing) via CoinGecko) for 12 weeks, summing up to a total of ~76,68 XMR split into 3 payments of 25,56 XMR every 4 weeks. At the end of each week, I'll comment a summary of what happened along the way and what tasks were done.

1. The library is there, it needs some love to be usable, cross platform and built in a reproducible fashion.

2. Camera isn't fun, especially when being cross-platform is a goal, but supporting it is critical for URQRs. This isn't a milestone on it's own, but a topic that I'll research, do some PoC and come up with a solution, especially because getting camera to work is one task, then we need to scan qr the codes (and be very fast at it), so this milestone is more of "explore the possibilities" and come up with a reasonable plan for future regarding cross-platform camera support.

mrcyjanek-xmruw-development.md

@@ -110,25 +110,30 @@ Features of the wallet include:
 - And all of the "obvious" features such as transaction list, subaddress list, wallet locking, QR code scanning, etc.
 
 
-## Plans
+## Milestones
 
-My plans are:
+Here are milestones the milestones that will be achieved during the 3 month period of this proposal, in no particular order, as it doesn't make sense to separate some things. Each week I'll post a short list of tasks achieved and every 4 weeks I'll put them up together so the progress can be verified.
 
-- Expanding compatibility of `monero_c` to all platforms that I have access to (Linux (glibc+musl), FreeBSD, iOS, MacOS, Windows) in an easily-reproducible way (single makefile and a docker environment)
+- Expanding compatibility of `monero_c` to all platforms that I have access to (Linux (glibc+musl), FreeBSD, iOS, MacOS, Windows) in an easily-reproducible way (single script and a docker environment)
 - Making `xmruw` available for all platforms (and I do mean all platforms) and in app stores (including play store, self-hosted f-droid repository, apple app store, .deb, and .rpm repository).
+- Implementing features desired by users, currently this includes
+  - periodic sync (via [background-sync](https://github.com/monero-project/monero/pull/8617)) to provide seamless experience, no matter how frequently the app is actually opened
+  - merchant mode
+  - many UI/UX improvements/changes (some of more important ones: make seed offset and its role more obvious, better backup mechanism, time-lock warn, automatic node selection)
+- Work on documentation (this will be a significant task on its own, but the goal is to allow anybody to integrate monero no matter what language/framework they are using by using monero_c/monero.dart).
 - Fix issues that were made along the way
   - Bytewords entering an infinite loop when incorrect text is passed in
   - No compatibility with Feather / ANONERO in offline mode due to lack of CBOR encoding
-  - Not cross-platform QR scanner
+  - Not cross-platform QR scanner [^1]
   - Bad UI on desktop (not that it's bad, it is just mobile-first)
-- Implementing features desired by users
+  - and more, if found when developing
 
 
 # Payment
 
 I'm proposing to work for 20 hours/week for `40$/hour` at a rate of `~125,14$/XMR` (according to open prices between 2024-02-17 and 2024-03-01 (date of writing) via [CoinGecko](https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/monero/historical_data)) for 12 weeks, summing up to a total of `~76,68` XMR split into 3 payments of `25,56` XMR every 4 weeks.
-At the end of each week, I'll comment a summary of what happened along the way and what tasks were done. Also, I'd love to work full-time on xmruw but this is sadly not an option for the next 3 months.
+At the end of each week, I'll comment a summary of what happened along the way and what tasks were done.
 
-------
+[^2]: The library is there, it needs some love to be usable, cross platform and built in a reproducible fashion.
 
-[^1]: The library is there, I want to clean up the compilation method of the binary first to ensure that users can easily build everything from the source.
+[^2]: Camera isn't fun, especially when being cross-platform is a goal, but supporting it is critical for URQRs. This isn't a milestone on it's own, but a topic that I'll research, do some PoC and come up with a solution, especially because getting camera to work is one task, then we need to scan qr the codes (and be **very** fast at it), so this milestone is more of "explore the possibilities" and come up with a reasonable plan for future regarding cross-platform camera support.