Samourai Wallet, a privacy-enhanced bitcoin wallet app, just received its first round of venture funding.
Katana Cryptographic, the company that maintains the Samourai Wallet, received a $100,000 investment from Cypherpunk Holdings with the purpose of developing new features to enhance privacy, specifically in regards to deterring Bitcoin surveillance.
Samourai Wallet is exclusive to Android users, and the new funding will be utilized to expand development, customer service and its quality assurance program.
New features on the wallet include a service that puts intermediary hops in a transaction to create uncertainty about which wallet pays for what, as well as a feature that makes it difficult to trace the origin of someone’s bitcoin. In return, users pay a small user fee to the company in bitcoin.
“We met with Katana, and were most impressed with the technologies they are developing and with Katana’s commitment to privacy,” Cypherpunk Director Dominic Frisby said in a press release. “We share similar values, so are delighted to be able to aid the future development of Katana’s products from such an early stage.”
Despite still being in alpha mode, Samourai Wallet currently has around 27,000 users, according to the company, and the first full version will hit the Android app store in June.
In March 2019, Samourai Wallet announced its latest update that supports Tor integration to offer additional privacy for its users. The application continues to expand its features, as a new service called Stonewall, free to users, will create doubt in regards to the ownership of bitcoin in a given transaction. Samourai Wallet also just released Dojo, a new software to power the most private bitcoin wallet on the market, a project that has been in the works since 2015, when Samourai was first launched.
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