Jul 27, 2019

@neillm I am not an expert I can only try to reproduce what I have read in other sources but I believe you are wrong. The only relevant difference between random and urandom is that the first one doesn't block and urandom blocks. Your article confirms it. Ok, maybe not quite, the is "Not all operating systems implement...". But I am talking about the linux kernel (>4). Electrum uses urandom because python crypt function uses urandom. In spesmilo/electrum there was an extremely long debate there with many myths and discrepancies but I think the conclusion was blocking/non blocking. the python's function used earlier random but there was also a debate there and the implementation changed from random to urandom. I think the main reason was a security aspect - urandom blocks unless not enought entropy, but the entropy source is the same with random, not different.