Topic: [BOUNTY CLOSED] Open Source (CC) Paper Wallet Kit for safe offline coin storage - page 9. (Read 27627 times)

I will be around and working on this in my spare time. As I said before, if there is anything I can do on the production end, I work in a pretty high end print shop and have access to anything necessary. I understand this is open source, but producing 'bills' that can be, for lack of a better term, standardized and accepted should be a short-long-term goal. If you need anything feel free to give me a shout.

As I said, this will all be open. So, your design can be added to the collection at any time. In fact, I hope we will have dozens and dozens of designs in a dropdown selection, in the printing software (derived from bitaddress.org probably).

Please do stay and contribute,
Perhaps some rich bitcoin early adopter will jump in and add to the bounty - OPEN CC-BY-SA license - if anyone pays, we ALL get to use it.

Starting on Monday, the openpaperwallet will be crowdfunded on two major crowdfunding sites. Early contributors will help launch the project and will get paper wallet kits in the mail from the very first quality production run. I will also be giving bigger rewards including reseller kits from my print runs for those who want to jump start a reseller business (100 kits, ready to sell, wholesale price, shipped worldwide).

The funds raised will be used to finance the open source code, web design and many more wallet designs. So don't go away ;-)

Regrettably, my design partner and I decided that we cannot take place in thistoday. Time does not allow for us to put in, what we feel would be an appropriate amount of time to make it worthwhile. We did discuss over the cutting table some ideas, including the backside. One that sticks in my mind is putting a "pattern" of 'text' designed to look like the lines in a standard currency of important websites to btc as a way to advertise the community. Like I say, these were quick notions while standing over a weeding table at a print/sign shop, so they may be worthless, but as we always say, even the worst ideas can spark the best.... 

It will either have a repeating pattern on the entire back of the sheet, or designers can submit two sided designs, which need to have elements that obscure the opposite-side QR from showing through, or being copied with a photocopier from underneath.

For example, a spirograph, mandala, "seal", or other pattern, positioned and with darker ink, will sufficiently mangle the writing showing through the paper.


Overall, I'm open to design suggestions. I would like to be able to support a range of needs from:

- Plain 80mg paper, on color laser or inkjet for home use. Essentially, a contribution to bitaddress users and code
- Some might prefer gloss, so consumer inkjet/laser photo paper, still home use, but slightly better quality -

My personal taste is more for matte finish.

Ideally a heavy weight, resistant to curling. Depending on the design, if it doesn't have micro-printing features (which are not really necessary), then a slightly more porous, fibrous, cotton based paper will work too (wove,laid,linen), even if it bleeds a bit, as longs as the design isn't too fine.

Summarize:

Sides: Both, pattern or design
Finish: Matte
Texture: Wove, Linen, Laid or Coated
Weight: Bond #28 or heavier, Text #80 or heavier, or possibly some specialist Tag or Index type. (not Card)
Opacity: 100% or Highest
Brightness: Medium-Low
Archival Quality: High (resistance to yellowing)

The exact brand and model will depend on local suppliers.
Something like a New Crown Plus Matte Cover or Bond will probably exist widely, in a variety of weights and brightness.

Sorry, I meant "below" or "around", not under. Y axis, not Z.

  [QR]
kkkeeyyy

or

kkkkk
[QR]ee
yyyyy

Was thinking about other designs today, and was curious -- have you picked the paper weight, and the brightness of the paper yet? Is the reverse side plain, or will it be patterned?

I'm still a little confused about the logistics of how the key can be printed under the QR code. The user receives blank sheets (with artwork only), prints the QR code into the blank boxes. Is there an intermediary step where the base58 keys are applied?

If you had a blank box with text inside it, and printed a QR code over it, the resulting QR code wouldn't work.

I was planning on having the full base58 keys: pub and private printed text under the QR code, inside the blank squares. Not in a new area.

I want to keep the number and size of the "blanks" limited to allow for maximum design space. If we can fit or extent the squares a bit, so as not to add another area, that would be best I think...

Once the template is done, we could demonstrate all the variations of models that can be printed. If we call the areas A-F for example, we could have a note that prints like this:

-Note with stub: A=pub, B=priv, C=firstbits, D=blank, E=pub, F=priv
-Note without stub: A=pub, B=priv, C=firstbits, D=blank, E=blank, F=blank
-Wide note: A=pub, B=blank, C=firstbits, D=blank, E=priv, F=blank
-Stub only: E=pub, F=priv, all else blank.

So for example, your design is the first one. 75RTUGA's is the second (traditional style?). No one has done the other two.

One engine, one template, 5-6 possible layouts, hundreds of designs.

This is a great idea.

I am not familiar enough with 2-of-3. I assume it is simply the special case of the m-of-n signing primitive.

Can you advise on how this would affect the layout? What would be printed on the note? We can certainly adjust the software later, but the design and template will need to be able to adapt to it, so we have to get those "right" now.

Advice? I think this is a critical idea...

Any thoughts on extending this to 2-of-3 implementations?

At the moment, support for 2-of-3 seems to really be lacking.  There are some scripts to export an armory wallet this way, but not a particular address. 

I think there are two overall goals of paper backups that 2-of-3 helps fix. 

1.  If you someone finds it,  you don't want them to be able to steal all your coins.
2.  If you lose it, you want to be able to recover it.

Thoughts?

I will update the template shortly to include full public keys.

aantonop, Will the full private key be needed as well? Just thinking about how to space things out to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. Not sure if you intend to have the private key on there with some sort of scratchoff sticker as well or what.

Very nice work. Love the color schemes.

This template with multiple designs is coming along nicely. I have a feeling the April launch will include more than the 3 designs I was hoping for...

I bet once it's out there and usable, we can have all kinds of designs: modern, clean, fancy, alternative, weird, bank-like, web2.0 like.

So far, most look like "money". I would like to see some even more radical designs, I'm sure they will come.

We will have a nice little "dropdown" choice full of designs... yay!

Thank you OP, amazing initiative. Because of this and the dev's public debates is why we love bitcointalk, apart from bear/bulls endless wars on speculation subforums, and of cours Avalon group buys

I'll update the other design to the new template in the morning. Here is something new.
Much cleaner and easy to make new color schemes so you can print different colors for the amount of btc you put on them.

Not necessarily...

The note is meant to have an OPTIONAL stub. You can print or not print it. Some designs will have it, others will not. The layout accomodates several different designs:

- Bill for folding (your style), print the left and mid-right boxes, leave the stub empty.
- Bill with backup, same as above, but stub with secondary keys for keeping in another location
- Wide-bill, print either the left QR and the two on the stub, or the left QR and only one of the stub QRs for a full-width note. No cut lines in that case

Basically, you have two widths to choose from (wide, or narrow), and four QR/key areas. You can mix/match any of those to print any variety of bills including your design. The cutlines and stub layout are optional and can be ignored in software for certain bill designs.

In any case, let's figure out how to make it work for several uses and markets (at least at the template, software-generator level), which will benefit everyone.

By the way, the scratch-off stickers cost less than  1 cent each, once you get to a $50 order size. Totally worth it in my mind. I'm ordering 10,000. As I said, doing this in a bulk order makes sense to get reasonable prices.

I would prefer to have both. The firstbits are meant to be larger, to easily distinguish different notes, when loading. When my app asks for note  134j5g2j6g256jg25624563456, and I have a stack of 100, I sure would like to be lookingat a big font for that.

However, I still would print the full key under the QRs, for recovery without scanning. The current design, I believe allows for both, but having a discussion between designers is exactly what I was hoping for.

I have not realized this is not already case. You are right, having the full address (and key!) is a must (at least in my use case).
QR-codes = machine-readable, latin letters = human-readable.  I would never print anything as just a QR code, most humans can read and type letters, but nobody can read QR codes.
And at least here in Europe, not a single person who bought the wallets had a QR code scanner on their phone.

On that note, I still like the 'firstbits' idea since they are just a few letters. You could shout it across the street if necessary. And blockchain.info supports them, so even less typing.

Very nice. *joining*


I have the same plans, in smaller series (if only to bring prices down for my vending machine). However, I am not sure yet If things like embossing wouldn't make the product to expensive (on the other hand, we do adress 2 slightly different 'markets'. For a secure offline storage even 10€ per wallet would be cheaper than a bank account, but at this price I would not use it to convert 3€ into BTC for newcomers…)

I am interested in the opinion of the general public/userbase: what would be a good 'target price' for a sheet of 3 or 4 wallets, printed in very good quality). Because the world of printing is so diverse, I like to approach these project from this side, because otherwise they are just too many options to choose from. Also I am just curious what kind of quality you can get for roughly the same price in the US vs. printing in Europe…


I can certainly start that, would have to do it for myself anyhow. Synergy!
But, what do you mean by multi-platform? Just that it 'runs' on different hosting providers? If yes: no problem, static HTML will do that we could use github for dev and hosting as long as there is no reason to change that.

I'm not too sure about the firstbits thingie, having at least the full address on there might be useful for people not having smartphones to scan QR codes.

Also about QR codes, without a webcam or smartphone one actually has to do quite some work to actually get to the address/private key (take a picture with a digicam etc.) - having a (compressed) cleartext private key might be useful, also as a backup. While the current Bitcoin users might be more on the "techie" side, still a lot of people don't even get what QR codes are, think they are only links to web sites or some other stuff. Having human readable characters might take more space but create more trust and also have some benefits for "non-QR people".

After reviewing the layout by acorn, I realized that it's vastly different in concept. It's more of a btc bank note, while I was more thinking in the direction if , well, a wallet. So it is just folded together, which makes it cheaper to print in any technique (just 1 side to print).
Also it does not need expensive stickers to cover the private key on the inside, since it just folded.

Not the critize the work done in this thread, there is space for multiple implementations for people with different needs and goals.

As I wrote, my personal main goal is to make the concept of Bitcoin as 'tangeable' as possible for newcomers (so even my testing process is different, I sit around with these in our hackspace explaining bitcoin. It also doubles as a work of art… )


I think with a little bit more there could be a 'sheet template' based on acorns, which would work for 'bank note'-style as well as 'folded paper'-style wallets. I feel we should use this moment in time to agree on some kind of sensible format which would work for the most possible use cases (mine and yours as well as the '3.0' version) and designs. What do you think?

(Just to be clear, I am writing here because I have the same goals as the OP, not as part of the bounty)