Pretty neat. Can someone fake the from address? It won't make it in a block but could they fake a transaction with a fake from address?
This can't be faked, no. The client will consider the transaction as invalid right away and not display it at all.
Is this service already in production? I would certainly like to support it on
btcbuy.info , I am advertising my service as a "quick" one, but the fact is that I have to wait for a confirmation, which often adds a lot of extra time to the wait
As far as sending these transactions from Instawallet is considered, this is already in production, yes. The best way of checking for the green address still needs to be worked out though, as the Bitcoin daemon currently provides no easy access to this information. So you might want to wait until that is sorted out before you try to integrate it. Alternatively you can write a nice patch yourself or bug the developers about it. Yay for open source. =)
This won't work out if you got eventually an orphan block first confirmed transaction.
As was later pointed out, you seem to be confusing some concepts. Orphan blocks have no impact on this approach at all. A green address transaction isn't really all that different from a normal transaction. And those don't disappear either when they end up in an orphaned block. They will just be confirmed with another block instead.
Jan - off-topic but can you add a QR image to your website home page that has the wallet bitcoin address?
Yes, I plan to add this at some point.
Rather instant and trustworthy = Instantrust?
I don't want to have "trust" in the name. It is presumptuous. Whether or not someone trusts a particular address is up to them. It has nothing to do with the address itself, so it shouldn't have a name that pretends so.
in some situations you can _only_ accept instant payments ... ATM machine shows QR code, says "please use a green address", ... user comes along who ignores the "please use a green address"
Sure, but then you need a hand shaking protocol and never send the receiving address before confirming the client/user groks the green address concept.
I invite you to implement such a protocol and have it gain widespread acceptance. No seriously, I also think that something like this is needed at some point. Not only in the context of green addresses, but for Bitcoin payments in general to be augmented with additional information. But my proposal for the QR codes solves the "users doesn't grok green address concept" in 80 % of all cases and requires minimal modifications to existing tools. That's a valuable thing in itself as well.
I have an idea to make InstaWallet easier for small retail businesses. I call it the "InstaWallet Cash Register". Here's how it would work:
Nice idea! It seems to me, that this would be better as a separate site, as it is targeting a different user group with a different set of requirements, as you are pointing out. As such, anyone is free to to start such a site! But you might be interested to hear, that I'm working on a similar idea, however not web-based, but as a standalone tool.