A Dark Wallet é um conjunto de ferramentas para armazenar, enviar e receber bitcoins que busca proteger e tornar anônimo o uso da criptomoeda. É uma reação contra aqueles que pretendem tirar o cripto das criptomoedas.

Se desejar testá-la, você pode ir até a página do Unsystem e navegar até o github. Lá está disponível o código fonte para download. Se estiver usando um sistema Windows, baixe o arquivo .zip. Se estiver no OSX, poderá escolher tanto o .zip como o tar.bz. Se estiver utilizando o Linux, você provavelmente precisará saber quais programas de arquivamento estão disponíveis no seu sistema e escolher o arquivo para baixar de acordo com eles. Assim que fizer o download, extraia a pasta para um local conhecido.

Para instalar a extensão ao seu Chrome Browser, vá em Configurações > Extensões, marque a opção Modo do desenvolvedor. Clique em “Carregar extensão expandida” e encontre a pasta que você acabou de extrair e aperte OK.

Você agora terá a Dark Wallet instalada no seu browser.

Ao abri-la pela primeira vez, você é recebido em uma interface limpa, simples e plana. A partir daí, você deve criar uma conta e pode escolher usar a Testnet se quiser. Como se trata aqui de um software alpha, essa é a melhor opção. A Testnet é uma arquitetura paralela usada para o teste e o desenvolvimento de softwares relacionados ao bitcoin. O sistema é desenhado de forma que as moedas dentro dele não tenham valor.

Quando sua conta for criada, você será levado à sua carteira. A partir de lá, você poderá gerenciar e criar “bolsos” (“pockets”), que são endereços adinistráveis dentro da carteira, e verificar seu histórico de transações. Há uma ferramenta de fundos chamada Multisig, que permite a criação de uma carteira que precise ser assinada por várias chaves para começar uma transação. Isso pode ser especialmente útil para empresas e organizações em que a pessoa que administra os bitcoins é seu dono e, devido à irreversibilidade das transações, é necessário algum tipo de transparência.

Na seção de envios estão localizadas as ferramentas básicas para enviar bitcoins para outros endereços, com opções avançadas como “CoinJoin”, que serve para misturar as transações de diferentes usuários, tornando-as difíceis de rastrear através do blockchain. A natureza pública das transações de bitcoin significa que há um risco de a anonimidade ser comprometida se uma parte má intencionada for dedicada o bastante.

Há também uma opção de depósito de fiação (“escrow”), que ainda não está ativa. Presumivelmente, isso permitirá que as transações sejam feitas em um endereço por um árbitro independente e, se houver alguma disputa entre as partes, o árbitro terá a palavra final na direção da transação. Se implementada corretamente, essa ferramenta poderá ser o antídoto descentralizante às ferramentas monolíticas como o Paypal e os bancos no papel de resolução de disputas. E é um padrão extremamente necessário para que o bitcoin ganhe popularidade.

Outras características incluem um sistema de contatos e há uma sala de conversas pública no “lobby”. É uma ótima ferramenta atualmente, uma vez que as conversas vão desde bobagens e absurdos até a resposta a perguntas sobre o programa e ao envio de moedas de teste entre as pessoas, para que as pessoas saibam como a Dark Wallet funciona. Se você não conseguir nenhuma testcoin, várias “torneiras” estão disponíveis para enviar uma quantidade razoável de testcoins para a sua carteira. Esta é uma delas com a qual eu e outras pessoas tivemos sucesso.

Embora a versão alfa do programa tenha alguns problemas, seu design e suas ferramentas têm muito potencial para torná-la a carteira de bitcoin mais popular. Com isso, o bitcoin poderia passar a ser impossível de ser assimilado ao paradigma financeiro atual. Esse é provavelmente o maior potencial das criptomoedas. Esse conceito, junto com um possível Dark Market no futuro pode ser uma alternativa extremamente robusta ao sistema de mercado “branco” atual.

O Dark Market, atualmente, é apenas uma prova de conceito e não está em desenvolvimento ativo, já que o time UnSystem quer focar seus esforços na Dark Wallet. O Dark Market seria, simplesmente, uma plataforma de mercado com o mesmo foco na privacidade e na anonimidade que a Dark Wallet. Seria uma contraeconomia P2P difícil de se enfrentar – nas palavras de Cody Wilson, onde “ninguém teria que ser Dread Pirate Roberts”.

Inicialmente, pode parecer que a Dark Wallet e o conceito do Dark Market sejam mais adequados à venda de contrabando, mas não há motivos por que, enquanto plataforma, ele não possa se tornar um grande bazar – uma nova Amazon ou eBay, livre das restrições centralizadas, com o uso de criptografia e redes peer to peer para facilitar as transações e resolver disputas.

Um mercado cinzento e negro paralelo que seduz o mercado branco.

Atualmente, há uma guerra entre aqueles que veem as criptomoedas como fundamentos sólidos para uma contraeconomia, aqueles que desejam esterilizá-la e recolocá-la dentro do mercado formal do estado e aqueles que simplesmente desejam destruí-la. Isso é imprescindível para algumas pessoas porque somente o mercado branco pode ser efetivamente controlado pelo estado, só no mercado branco é possível extrair impostos sobre a movimentação de bens e serviços e é só nele que é possível impor regulamentações. A Dark Wallet é uma defesa contra tudo isso, não importa se sejamos atores conscientes da contraeconomia ou não. Enquanto anarquistas, não é apenas ético, mas é também parte de nosso objetivo participar da contraeconomia e ajudar a expandi-la – executar trocas voluntárias sem alimentar o estado. A guerra entre esses mercados é antiga e a Dark Wallet é uma das novas armas para as próximas batalhas.

Traduzido do inglês para o português por Erick Vasconcelos.

Dark Wallet is a suite of tools for storing, sending and receiving Bitcoins that seeks to protect and anonymise the use of the crypto-currency. It stands against those who would seek to take the crypto out of crypto-currency.

If you do wish to test it out yourself, you can find it by going to UnSystem’s page and navigating to the github. From there the source code is available to download. If you are using a windows system, download the .zip. If you are on OSX, you can choose either the .zip or the tar.bz. If you are using Linux, you should probably be aware of what archiving programs are on your system and choose accordingly. Once it is downloaded, extract the folder to a known location.

To install the extension to your Chrome Browser, go to Settings > Extensions, then tick the Developer Options box, and then click “load unpacked extension“,  find the folder you have just extracted and hit OK.

You will now have Dark Wallet installed on your browser.

Upon running Dark Wallet for the first time, you are greeted with a clear, simple and flat interface. From here you are prompted to create an account, you can choose to use the Bitcoin Testnet if you wish. This is alpha software, so this is the wise choice. The Testnet is a parallel Bitcoin architecture used for the testing and development of Bitcoin related software. It is designed in such a way that the coins in the system remain worthless.

Once your account is created, you are taken to your wallet. From here you can manage and create “pockets,” which are administerable sub-wallet addresses, and check your transaction history. There is a Multisig fund feature, which allows the creation of a wallet that is required to be signed by multiple keys in order to initiate a transaction. This seems especially useful for business and organisations where the person administrating the Bitcoins is not necessarily the owner of the Bitcoins, and due to the irreversible nature of these transactions, accountability is important.

In the send section are the basic tools to send your Bitcoins to other addresses, with added advanced options such as “CoinJoin” which is a feature that mixes transactions from different users together, making them difficult to track through the blockchain. The public nature of Bitcoin transactions means there is a risk of anonymity being compromised if a malicious party is interested enough.

There is also an escrow option that is not yet active. Presumably this will allow transactions to be held at an address by a third party arbiter, if a dispute arises between two parties, the arbiter can have final say as to which direction the transaction flows. If implemented properly, this could be an effective decentralised antidote to monolithic institutions such as Paypal and banks in the role of a dispute resolution service. This is a much needed standard, if Bitcoin is to gain mainstream traction.

Other features include a system for keeping contacts, and right now there is a public chat under “lobby”. This is a great feature to have right now, the lobby moves randomly from bouts of nonsense and pointless trolling to answering questions about the software, and people sending and receiving test coins to each other so they can get a sense of how Dark Wallet works. If you can’t get a hold of any Testcoins, numerous “faucets” are available that will send you a reasonable sum of TestCoins to your wallet. Here is one that I, and others have had success with.

While the alpha is not without it’s bugs, the design and features available have great potential to proliferate and become a mainstream Bitcoin wallet. In doing so, it could make Bitcoin unassimilable into the current financial paradigm. This is possibly the greatest potential that Bitcoin can offer. This concept, along with the possible future Dark Market may be an extremely robust and open alternative to the current white market system.

Dark Market is at present a proof of concept not currently in active development, as the UnSystem team wish to focus their current efforts on Dark Wallet. To it put simply, Dark Market is a market platform with the same focus on privacy and anonymity as Dark Wallet. A P2P distributed counter economy, which can not easily be shut down – in Cody Wilson’s words, market “where no one has to be Dread Pirate Roberts”.

While an initial look at Dark Wallet, and the concept Dark Market may seem like they are best suited for selling contraband, there is no reason that this, as a platform, could not eventually become a Grand Bazaar – a new Amazon or eBay free from centralised restriction, utilising cryptography and peer to peer networking to facilitate transactions and resolve disputes.

A parallel grey and black market that seduces the white.

Right now there is a battle between those who see crypto-currencies as a solid foundation for a modern counter-economy, those who wish to sterilise and recuperate it into the state approved white market and those who simply want to destroy it. This is imperative to them because only the white market can effectively be controlled by the state, only in the white market can taxes be sought on the movement of goods and services and regulation be placed on what we trade. Dark Wallet equips us against this, whether we are self-consciously engaging in the counter-economy or not. As anarchists it is not only ethical, but conducive to our goal to engage and expand the counter-economy – to engage in voluntary exchange without feeding the state. The war between these markets is an old one, and Dark Wallet represents a new weapon in that battle.

The huge literature on state-making, contemporary and historic, pays virtually no attention to its obverse: the history of deliberate and reactive statelessness. This is the history of those who got away, and the state-making cannot be understood apart from it.” –James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed.

There are many projects that have been developed throughout the past several decades that, if not created by market anarchists, have been immediately recognized by market anarchists as expressions of our dissolution strategy against that personal-cultural-structural damage known as the state – our enemy.

Open-Source Insurgency [PDF] – making centralized or authoritarian governance impossible. Free Open-Source Software – Debian; PGP Encryption Systems and The Tor Project – Wikileaks, Silk Road and Anonymous; Peer-to-peer File Sharing – BitTorrent, The Pirate Bay, BitCoin.

Homebrew Industrial Revolutions – making centralized or authoritarian production irrelevant. Asynchronous Collaborative Editing – Wikipedia, MOOC; Networked Manufacturing – 100k Garages, Fab Labs; CNC Production and 3-D Printing – Open-Source Ecology, Hackerspaces; DIY science and food production – Wetlabs, Aquaponics; Crowd Sourced Fundraising and Support – The Common Ground Collective, Indiegogo, Occupy Sandy.

Kevin Carson nicely sums up our approach:

“Our goal is not to assume leadership of existing institutions, but rather to render them irrelevant. We don’t want to take over the state or change its policies. We want to render its laws unenforceable. We don’t want to take over corporations and make them more ‘socially responsible.’ We want to build a counter-economy of open-source information, neighborhood garage manufacturing, Permaculture, encrypted currency and mutual banks, leaving the corporations to die on the vine along with the state.

We do not hope to reform the existing order. We intend to serve as its grave-diggers.”

Today we have Defense Distributed‘s Liberator. Tomorrow we will have UnSystem‘s Dark Wallet. Two projects that integrate the dissolutionary powers of impossibility and irrelevance.

Dark Wallet will be one of the many shovels available to us to ease and hasten our fossarian desires. It is A Line In The Sand – Just In Time For Our Disappearance.

The Center for a Stateless Society is excited to donate to and support the Dark Wallet project. We would also like to introduce our supporters to a new project of our own.

A couple of months ago C4SS received a 100 bitcoin donation back when bitcoin was trading around $124. Now bitcoin is trading around $200. The C4SS workgroup debated on what to do with all that bitcoin. The first suggestions were to donate the lion’s share to established projects that were in line with our interests and aspirations like the EFF, the IWW General Defense Fund and Work People’s College, the P2P Foundation and Chelsea Manning’s Canteen Fund.

Then it was decided that, even though these organizations and projects are near and dear to our hearts, there are still more projects out there – eager, waiting, dreaming. Projects where enthusiasm outstrips resources. Where a $200 donation is the difference between a nascent anarchist infoshop in Alabama or Egypt closing its doors or expanding its operations.

We want the resiliency and the information found in the stigmergic swarm of projects and people doing new things. We want to challenge established groups to up their game and break their preconceived limits by offering them competition. The state is digging in and doubling down on total surveillance and prison economies. We need preemption, dislocation and disruption – now! We want virtualization, repetition and coopetition – now! We are dedicated to finding the cracks in the state’s system, wedging them open, freeing all prisoners and pulverizing the foundations.

We are calling this project: Entrepreneurial Anti-Capitalism.

We will be blogging about the projects we support as they come to our attention. We are reaching out through a number of networks to try to get an idea of what is out there or who is getting ready to start a project. If you know of a project, let us know. If you want to donate to the Entrepreneurial Anti-Capitalism project, let us know.

In the meantime, please, support Dark Wallet today and grab a shovel.