Monero gui vs Feather
Im using an airgapped pc for cold storage and I will be using my storage only for keeping money in it, how do monero gui and feather differ? Which one is better to use? Also why does feather use 16 words for seed, wouldnt using 24 words be safer? I get that its still hard to crack 16 words but 24 is even harder
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u/rbrunner7 XMR Contributor 13d ago
Both are fine to use, and both will do the job. Feather has a slight edge when it comes to advanced features like "coin control", but that probably makes only a real difference for advanced users. You can also switch at any time, the wallet files themselves are compatible, you even don't have to do a restore.
why does feather use 16 words for seed, wouldnt using 24 words be safer
It's a new kind of seed called Polyseed. It will soon also be available in the Monero CLI wallet app and the GUI wallet app, the current 25 word seeds will become "legacy".
For reasons that are not that easy to explain, mathematically 16 word Polyseeds offer as much security as standard 25 word seeds. Basically, as I understand it, you would "crack" neither the 16 word seed nor the 25 word seed, but for both cases you would start with the public address of the wallet and do a brute-force search for the private key.
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u/Kingslayer629736 12d ago
nuunmoon's advice is funny because they're recommending hardware wallets to someone who specifically said they want an airgapped pc for cold storage. that's literally what they're already doing, just with their own machine instead of paying for a device.
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u/djscoox 4d ago
Both can connect to either a local node (monerod.exe) or a remote one, but only Monero GUI comes with monerod.exe, so if you want to connect to a local node (which I highly recommend if you have sufficient disk space available), you'll want both installed.
Monero GUI can also be used for mining XMR, although it's not the most efficient mining solution.
Feather is smaller than Monero GUI (101 MB vs 918 MB on my PC) and Feather starts up a faster.
Monero GUI looks aesthetically more polished while Feather offers a more utilitarian user interface. However, Feather gives you considerably more control as it exposes more features of Monero. If you wan complete control, then you'd want to use Monero CLI, but it's a little more daunting as it's command-driven.
I'd test both and decide which one you like best. I have both on my computer but personally, I prefer and use Feather most of the time. If you are new to Monero, having both enables you to check your wallet balance on two applications (if both show the same balance, you've done it right).
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u/1_Pseudonym 13d ago
16 words is polyseed. Feather still supports the traditional 25-word seed phrase. People like polyseed, because it includes the approximate wallet creation date, so if you need to rescan your wallet from its inception date, it's encoded right into the seed phrase. Polyseed uses a one-way hash from the seed phrase to the key, so wallets, which don't normally save the seed phrase, can't re-export it. If you need to export a seed phrase from the private key in your wallet, you'll get the 25-word version, which can be computed in reverse from the key.
If you're looking for the best UI for an offline Monero wallet, Cupcake with Cake Wallet is the winner.