< the skull

BIMBOOO AND ZION WALLET
=======================
2026-09-17

This week I want to show two projects. The first is Bimbooo, a neat service for
anyone who wants to publish some text, keep a snippet, or make a tiny site
without turning it into an operation. The second is Zion Wallet, a personal
Bitcoin and Ethereum terminal I built to study wallets, keys, and signatures
with a real device sitting on my desk.

They are very different, but they came from the same impulse: to make tools that
are small, understandable, and mine.

Bimbooo, a small pink elephant for a small place on the web.

Bimbooo: a quieter place to put things on the web
=================================================

I made Bimbooo because the web got loud. I wanted a calm corner where I could
paste a snippet, write a page, and keep a tiny site, all at an address that is
easy to remember and easy to read out loud over the phone.

That became bimb.ooo. The point is not to compete with a giant publishing
platform. It is to offer a simple, friendly, deliberately small place.

Título: Bimbooo Home - Descrição: The Bimbooo home page introduces its three
ways to publish: pastes, Markdown pages, and small HTML sites.

The Bimbooo home page introduces its three ways to publish: pastes, Markdown
pages, and small HTML sites.

Three uses, without a pile of tools
-----------------------------------

Bimbooo brings together three things that usually live apart.

· A pastebin for code, notes, and snippets you want to retrieve later.

· Markdown pages rendered into something pleasant to read.

· Hosting for a tiny static site written by hand in HTML.

Each person gets an address of their own, such as you.bimb.ooo/notes. There is
no build step, no folder to upload, and no dashboard packed with settings. You
open your desk, write, pick a name, and publish.

If the name ends in .md, Bimbooo renders Markdown. If it ends in .html, it can
be part of your own site. Other names can remain plain text. An index.html, an
optional style.css, and an about page are enough to make a small home on the
web.

Invitations and human scale
---------------------------

The service is invite-only and kept by hand. There are no ads, trackers, or
feeds fighting for attention. The person publishing does not become a metric on
a dashboard.

To join, you ask for a seat and answer two short questions. Once I approve the
request, you sign in, open the editor, and start publishing. It usually takes a
day or two because a person looks at every request, not a machine pretending
that this is community.

You can also choose how visible each item should be. A publication can be
public, unlisted, or private. Expiration is available for things that should
exist briefly. A read-once note destroys itself after it is opened. If an edit
goes wrong, Bimbooo keeps the previous copy so you can take one step back.

Small precautions that matter
-----------------------------

Bimbooo is one small program with strong walls. Each person's content lives on
its own origin and cannot reach into someone else's space. Passwords are hashed,
forms are guarded, and pages follow a strict security policy.

Security was not added as a late repair. It has been part of the structure from
the beginning. That helps the service stay light, fast, and inexpensive to
maintain without using simplicity as an excuse for carelessness.

Título: Bimbooo Personal Hero - Descrição: An example of a personal site
published on Bimbooo, with its own HTML and visual identity.

An example of a personal site published on Bimbooo, with its own HTML and visual
identity.

A site that still feels like yours
----------------------------------

The result does not have to look like a Bimbooo product. My own corner at
murad.bimb.ooo uses typography, color, humor, and a structure that look nothing
like the service's home page. It feels like mine because the HTML and CSS are
mine.

That matters to me. A small publishing service should not erase the personality
of the person publishing. It should take care of the address, storage, and
delivery, then leave the rest alone.

Where to see more
-----------------

Three addresses show the idea from different angles.

· docs.bimb.ooo [1] contains the service documentation.

· murad.bimb.ooo [2] is my personal site on Bimbooo.

· allhallows.bimb.ooo [3] is Henrique's site and shows another identity built in
the same space.

If that sounds useful, visit bimb.ooo [4]. It is a small place for text, kept by
people, with room for sites that do not need to justify their existence.

Zion Wallet: a wallet built for my desk
=======================================

Zion is a different kind of project. It is not a public service or a wallet I am
offering for other people to use. It is a personal, experimental terminal made
to sit on my desk and help me understand Bitcoin, Ethereum, keys, vaults, and
the care that money requires.

The device uses an Orange Pi CM4 with a Rockchip RK3566 processor, four ARM64
cores, and Debian. On the front is a 400 by 1280 pixel display mounted
vertically and treated as a 160 by 25 character console. Behind it is a web
interface for tasks that need more room.

A hot wallet, called what it is
-------------------------------

Zion is a hot wallet. It stays powered on and connected to the network. Keys are
protected while stored, the vault can be locked and unlocked, and the device
reboots into a locked state. None of that turns a connected computer into cold
storage.

I wanted that distinction to be explicit because security language can create
confidence a system has not earned. Encryption at rest, a vault password, and a
locked reboot are useful mitigations. They are not a change of category.

Zion separates the protections of a hot wallet from guarantees that require a
truly offline device.

One core, two interfaces
------------------------

At the center of the project is a single ZionRuntime. Both the terminal
interface and the WebGUI talk to the same core through coordinators, so both
screens show the same state and enforce the same rules.

Money never travels through the system as a floating-point number. Bitcoin is
stored as satoshis, Ethereum as wei, and conversion for display uses Decimal. It
is a small decision in the code, but an important one in any program that
handles monetary values.

The physical display works as a persistent cockpit. The web interface handles
actions that would be awkward in 160 by 25 characters. This split does not
create two wallets. It creates two ways to operate the same wallet.

The architecture keeps one shared core behind both the terminal interface and
the web interface.

How the project grew
--------------------

In the first phase, everything was mocked. I needed to find the shape of the
product before connecting the interface to real networks.

In the second phase, Bitcoin started talking to Electrum Signet through JSON-RPC
over a Unix socket. The wallet file path and password behavior became explicit.
Phase 2.2 then turned the experience into a small appliance: a cockpit, an
ambient screen, blocks made with half characters, and ZION appearing at boot.

Phase 2.3 brought the WebGUI. The page is static and served by Python because
this Orange Pi does not run Node. The web administration password is separate
from the vault password, and the browser never receives private keys.

The third phase added Ethereum on Sepolia. The wallet starts from a 12-word
phrase, uses an encrypted keystore, and signs EIP-1559 transactions on the
device. JSON-RPC communication is asynchronous. At that point I froze version
0.1.0 and treated it as a stable base for continued testing.

The path of a transaction
-------------------------

Sending is not a matter of pressing a button and hoping. The flow is split into
visible steps.

1\. The transaction is prepared.

2\. Its details are presented for review.

3\. The person authenticates again.

4\. The vault is unlocked only when needed.

5\. The transaction is signed inside the device.

6\. A physical confirmation can be required on the 160 by 25 character display.

7\. Only then is the signed transaction broadcast.

The browser never signs. Signing and broadcasting are separate operations. Keys
never leave the device. There is also an honest limitation: in Python, deleting
an object does not guarantee that every copy of a secret immediately disappears
from memory. The project reduces exposure, but it does not promise a kind of
memory wiping the language cannot guarantee.

The flow separates preparation, review, local signing, physical confirmation,
and broadcast. In use, Zion consumes roughly 40 percent of one core, or less
than 10 percent of the processor when all four cores are considered. Memory use
stays close to 100 MB on a board with nearly 8 GB, and load normally remains
below 0.4. Without a cooler, temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius are expected,
still below the thermal throttling point.

For now, everything remains on test networks. Bitcoin uses Signet and Ethereum
uses Sepolia. Mainnet is disabled. I have not yet completed the entire path with
funded transactions, from sending to final confirmation, or restored a funded
wallet. I also want a better receipt confirmation flow and an easier way to scan
a QR code with a phone. There is no invented success message hiding those gaps.
If a step has not been proven from end to end, the interface should not pretend
that it has.

Bimbooo and Zion solve different problems. Bimbooo is a service for other people
to publish small things without entering a growth machine. Zion is personal,
experimental, and stays on my desk. What they share is the desire to understand
what I am building. I like tools that show their limits, leave room for
personality, and do not need to be enormous to be useful.

Bimbooo became a quiet place for text. Zion became the device I wanted: two live
networks, a console display that looks as if it came from another era, and a web
interface for everything else. Neither one needs to pretend to be bigger than it
is. To me, that is part of the charm.

Links:
  [1] https://docs.bimb.ooo
  [2] https://murad.bimb.ooo
  [3] https://allhallows.bimb.ooo
  [4] https://bimb.ooo


< the skull