Re: [bitcoin-dev] Named Bitcoin Addresses

[Mark Friedenbach <mark@friedenbach.org>]

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Are you aware of the payment protocol?
On Sep 10, 2015 2:12 PM, "essofluffy . via bitcoin-dev" <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> An issue I'm sure everyone here is familiar with is the problem concerning
> the fact that Bitcoin addresses are too complex to memorize and share.
> Current Bitcoin addresses can be very intimidating to new users. As Bitcoin
> grows it's necessary to provide a much more user friendly experience to the
> end user. I think that having the capability to assign a unique name to a
> Bitcoin address is in the best interest of Bitcoin and it's users.
> I've recently come up with a method for assigning a unique name to a
> specific Bitcoin address. I'm looking to get some feedback/criticism on
> this method that I have detailed below.
>
> Let’s run through Bob and Alice transacting with a Named Bitcoin Address.
> Bob wants to collect a payment from Alice for a service/good he is
> selling, but Alice wants to pay from her home computer where she securely
> keeps all her Bitcoin. So now Bob needs to give Alice his Bitcoin address
> and because Bob is using a Named Bitcoin Address and a supported wallet he
> can give her an easy to memorize and hard to mess up address. Bob’s address
> is simply ‘SendBitcoinsToBob’ which can easily be written down or
> memorized. Now Alice can go home send the Bitcoin from her own supported
> wallet and be positive that she sent it to Bob.
>
> Let’s look at how Bob’s supported wallet made that address.
>
> First Bob let’s his wallet know that he wants to create a new address. In
> response, his wallet simply asks him what he wants that address to be
> named. Bob then enters ‘SendBitcoinsToBob’ as his preferred address name.
> The wallet then let’s Bob know if his preferred address name is available.
> If it’s available the name is broadcasted to the network and ready to use.
>
> Now let’s get a little more technical.
>
> When Bob inputs his preferred address name the client has to make sure
> this name hasn’t been taken or else who knows where Alice will be sending
> her Bitcoins. The client does this by referencing a downloaded “directory”
> of names chosen by people using this system. This directory of names are
> transactions sent to an address without a private key (but still viewable
> on the blockchain) with the name appended to the transactions as an
> OP_RETURN output. These transactions are downloaded or indexed, depending
> on whether or not the wallet contains the full Blockchain or is an SPV
> wallet. Because of such a large amount of possible address names a binary
> search method is used to search through all this data efficiently. The
> names could be sorted in two ways, the first being the first character and
> the second being the total length of the name (I will being exploring
> additional methods to make this process more efficient). So now that Bob’s
> client has verified that the name has not been taken and is valid (valid
> meaning it's under 35 bytes long and only using chars 0-9 and a-z) it sends
> a transaction of 1 satoshi and a small fee to the address without a private
> key as talked about earlier. The transaction's OP_RETURN output consists of
> two parts. The implementation version of this method (up to 8 characters)
> and the name itself (up to 32 characters). Once the transaction is
> broadcasted to the network and confirmed the name is ready to be used.
>
> Let’s look at how Alice’s supported wallet sends her Bitcoin to Bob’s
> Named Bitcoin Address.
>
> When Alice enters in Bob’s address, ‘SendBitcoinsToBob’ Alice’s client
> references the same “directory” as Bob only on her device and searches for
> the OP_RETURN output of ‘SendBitcoinsToBob’ using a very similar binary
> search method as used for the verification of the availability of an
> address name. If a name isn’t found the client would simply return an
> error. If the name is found then the client will pull the information of
> that transaction and use the address it was sent from as the address to
> send the Bitcoin to.
>
> Essentially what this idea describes is a method to assign a name to a
> Bitcoin address in a way that is completely verifiable and independent of a
> third party.
>
> Please ask your questions and provide feedback.
>
> - Devin
>
>
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>

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