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Selecting a node in Settings > Wallet > Node moved the checkmark and persisted the choice, but the live session never switched: the node client is baked into the wallet instance at open time and was only rebuilt on the next unlock, so a running wallet kept polling the old (often dead) node. Owners onboarded on an older build still carry the retired grinnode.live default in connections.toml, which now 502s, so the wallet showed a stuck zero balance with no way to recover short of a force-restart. GRIM's own connection-settings UI reconnects on change (close + reopen); the Goblin node picker only called update_connection, so this was a Goblin regression, not inherited upstream. - Wallet::reconnect_node swaps the live node client's URL + secret in place via w2n_client (no close/reopen, so no password re-entry), updates the runtime connection so the UI reflects the switch at once, clears the stale sync error, and wakes the sync thread to refresh against the new node. Wired into all three picker actions. - node_url_secret factored out of create_node_client so open and live reconnect always resolve the same node for a given config. - balance_hero no longer renders a bare 0 during a node outage: a pure balance_subline state machine picks updating / can't-reach-node / last-known-balance, so an unreachable node reads honestly instead of looking like an emptied wallet. New goblin.home.balance_stale string in all six locales (drift green). - Unit tests for the balance state machine.
Goblin
Goblin is a private, pay-by-username wallet for GRIN ツ - confidential digital cash on Mimblewimble, with no amounts or addresses on the chain.
Instead of passing slatepack files back and forth, you pay a username (or an npub) and the payment is delivered for you as an end-to-end encrypted message over nostr, routed through Tor. Relays only ever see ciphertext - never the amount, the sender, or the recipient. Tor hides your IP from the relay; the relay and encryption hide the rest - content, sender, timing.
Goblin is a fork of the Grim egui GRIN wallet: it keeps Grim's full GRIN node/wallet engine and layers a Nostr-native, mobile-first payments experience on top.
What it does
- Send to people - pay a
usernameornpub; the GRIN slatepack travels as a NIP-17 gift-wrapped DM (kind 1059) over Tor and is applied automatically by the recipient's wallet. No files to swap, no need to both be online at once. - Manual slatepacks too - when you need to pay or get paid without a handle, Settings → Wallet → Slatepacks exposes the classic by-hand flow: create a slatepack to send, or paste one to receive, finalize, or pay.
- In-app identity - a nostr payment key that is deliberately not part of your seed, so you can rotate it any time to stay unlinkable without touching your funds. An optional human-readable
namecomes from the goblin.st identity service. - Private by construction - GRIN's address-less, confidential chain; your payments and identity (nostr relays, NIP-05 lookups, price) are routed through Tor, so who-pays-whom never touches the clear net. The GRIN node connection - block sync and broadcasting your transaction - is direct: public chain data, the same for everyone, and not tied to your identity. Keys, names and history stay on your device.
- Configurable amount pairing - show balances against a world currency, Bitcoin, or sats (rates fetched over Tor), or turn the preview off.
- News on Home - the latest post from the official Goblin news key (a kind 30023 long-form article) appears on the Home screen; it stays hidden when there is nothing to show, and only ever shows the newest article.
- Cross-platform - Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, built in pure Rust on egui.
How a payment travels
you ──slatepack──▶ NIP-17 gift wrap (kind 1059, NIP-44 encrypted)
│
Tor
│
┌─────────────┴─────────────┐
your relays recipient's DM relays (kind 10050)
└─────────────┬─────────────┘
▼
recipient ◀──unwrap, verify seal author, apply slatepack
The wrap is NIP-44-encrypted, and delivery uses the recipient's DM relay list (kind 10050). Tor hides your IP from the relay; the relay and the encryption above hide the rest - content, sender, timing.
Both parties only need one relay in common. The default set is the Goblin relay plus large public relays (relay.damus.io, nos.lol), and the set is editable in Settings → Relays.
Build
Desktop (Linux / macOS / Windows)
Goblin links Tor in-process via arti - the wallet is a single self-contained binary, no sidecar, nothing separate to install:
git submodule update --init --recursive
cargo build --release
./target/release/goblin
Goblin's identity and payment traffic (nostr relays, NIP-05 lookups and price fetches) rides Tor: every relay, the money-path relay included, is reached over a Tor exit to its ordinary clearnet host. The GRIN node connection (block sync and transaction broadcast) is not routed through Tor: it connects directly, as it carries only public chain data that isn't linked to your wallet.
Android
Install the Android SDK / NDK, then from the repo root:
./scripts/android.sh build|release v7|v8|x86
v7/v8/x86 is the device CPU architecture for build; for release pass a version in major.minor.patch form.
Identity service (goblin-nip05d)
The optional name service lives in goblin-nip05d/ (axum + SQLite) and is deployed at goblin.st. It implements NIP-05 resolution, NIP-98-authenticated registration and release (names are never transferred - on a key rotation you release the old name and re-register, or import your existing identity). The wallet is fully usable - and fully anonymous - without it. Avatars aren't stored or served - clients render them from the pubkey (an npub gradient with the username's first letter, else the Grin mark).
License
Apache License v2.0.
Credits
🤖 Built with AI pair-programming assistance (Claude)
The underlying cross-platform GRIN wallet engine is the upstream Grim project.