An independent reference, not a wallet

Why this site exists

Self-custody documentation tends to arrive in two unhelpful forms. Either it is written by the people who made the thing, which makes it accurate but promotional, or it is written by an affiliate site that has never opened the application and reprints a feature list with a five-star rating attached.

We wanted a third option: a reference that starts from the questions people actually type into a search box — is it safe, is there a mobile app, does it support Lightning, where did the CoinJoin feature go — and answers them plainly, including when the answer is "that does not exist and here is why".

A large share of money lost in Bitcoin self-custody is lost to impostor applications, typo-squatted download pages, and backups that were never tested. Those are documentation failures as much as security failures, and they are the ones we spend the most words on.

How we work

Every factual claim about the software — version numbers, supported devices, file names, feature behaviour, licence terms — is taken from the project's own website, documentation and release notes, and cited on the page where it appears. Where a claim cannot be sourced, we leave it out rather than round it up. You will not find invented benchmarks, invented user counts, or an audit report we cannot point you to.

Verdicts, comparisons, risk assessments and warnings are our own editorial judgement, and we label them as such. Where we disagree with a design decision we say so; where we think most readers should choose different software, we say that too. Pages carry the date they were last reviewed, and we re-check version-dependent facts when releases ship.

We correct errors. If something here is wrong, outdated, or reads as more certain than the evidence supports, tell us and we will fix it and note the change.

What we will never do

• Ask for your recovery phrase, private keys, wallet file or passwords. There is no circumstance in which this site needs them, and anyone who asks is stealing from you.
• Offer wallet recovery, "unlocking" or fund-tracing services, or refer you to anyone who does.
• Host, mirror or link to a download of the wallet software from anywhere but the official project.
• Give personalised investment advice, price predictions, or any suggestion to trade.
• Run pop-ups, interstitials or countdown timers to push you towards a link.

How the site is funded

There is no paywall, no newsletter wall and no advertising network on this site. Some outbound links to third-party services — the buttons that lead to a place where bitcoin can be bought — may earn this site a commission if you go on to use that service. That arrangement never changes what we write: it does not buy a recommendation, a rating, or a removed criticism, and the wallet software itself is free and cannot be monetised by anyone here.

Being straightforward about that is easier than pretending otherwise. If a link ever appears in a place where it does not serve the reader, that is a mistake worth reporting.

Editorial independence and the Sparrow project

Sparrow Wallet is free software released under the Apache 2.0 licence by its own developers. We use the name to describe the software this site documents, which is nominative use — it does not imply any relationship. Screenshots-style diagrams on this site are our own recreations of the interface, not copies of project assets, and the project's trademarks and copyrights remain with their owners.

If you are looking for support with the application itself, the project's own channels are the right place. We cannot see your wallet, cannot reset anything, and would not want the ability.