3.0 KiB
Wallet Compatibility
BAL (Bitcoin After Life) builds and signs Electrum transactions using Electrum's own wallet and signing infrastructure. Its compatibility therefore depends on the wallet type in use.
| Wallet type | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Standard wallet (single-signature, seed-based) | ✅ Supported | Primary, fully tested target |
| Hardware wallets (Ledger, Trezor, Coldcard, BitBox02, Jade, KeepKey, etc.) | ✅ Supported | Any hardware wallet supported by Electrum itself |
| Multisig wallets | ❌ Not yet supported | Known limitation identified 2026-07-18. Support is planned for a future plugin release. |
| Electrum TrustedCoin (2FA) wallets | ❓ Unknown / unsupported | Known limitation identified 2026-07-18. It has not yet been determined whether or when this will be addressed. |
What "not supported" means in practice
For multisig and TrustedCoin (2FA) wallets, BAL's behavior has not been verified and should be considered unreliable. Do not rely on BAL to protect an inheritance set up on one of these wallet types until this document is updated to mark them as supported.
Electrum version compatibility
See README.md for supported Electrum versions (currently 4.7.2
and 4.8.0).
QR wire-format compatibility
BAL exports/imports wills as QR codes. BAL QR (the default) is the plugin's own frame format and is only understood by BAL itself. The export page also supports BC-UR v1, BC-UR v2 and BBQR:
| Format | Wire appearance | Interop target |
|---|---|---|
| BAL QR | BAL1<total><index><flag>… (v2) / BALQR1|total|index|… (legacy import-only) |
Past/other BAL versions: v2 exports are NOT readable by old builds; old BALQR1 exports still import here (default, best-of compression, flag 0 = plain, Z = deflate) |
| BC-UR v1 | ur:bytes/<bc32> |
Blockchain Commons / Coldcard-style UR (BC32, SHA-256 digest, part counts per part) |
| BC-UR v2 | ur:bytes/<seq>-<seqlen>/<bytewords> |
BC-UR 2.x fountain codes (CBOR parts, CRC-32, bytewords-minimal) |
| BBQR | B$<enc><type><N><n>… |
Coinkite BitKit / Coldcard's BBQR animated-QR mode |
Import auto-detects the format of each scanned code; out-of-order, duplicate
and (for UR v2) partially-lost fountain frames are handled. Interop is
validation-tested against the reference C++ bc-ur encoder output and the
BCR-2020-004/005 BC32 test vectors; it has not yet been cross-verified against
third-party libraries (ur, bbqr, Coldcard firmwares).
Reporting compatibility issues
If you find a compatibility problem not listed here, please open an issue on this repository describing the wallet type, Electrum version, and the exact error or unexpected behavior observed.