Topic: MultiBit - page 82. (Read 336309 times)

Also, I have been looking into getting some custom USB drives made with the MultiBit logo/ site URL on and preloading them with:

+ the MultiBit executable
+ Java runtimes for Windows + Linux (Macs always have one).

This would mean you could have a 'secure stash' for your bitcoins where you could plug in your 'MultiBit USB drive' into ANY Windows/ Mac/ Linux machine to access your bitcoins.   Your wallets would be stored on the USB drive.
When you are not accessing them you just store them wherever you store your passports/ family jewelry.

Our current prefered model is this one:
http://www.usb-flashdrive.co.uk/usb-flash-drives/twister-drive-1


For backup, you will be able to export your wallets' private keys and put them somewhere safe.
For security this would only make sense when both the MultiBit private key export files and wallets are both encrypted hence the push on that.

We will be offering these for sale to the general public at pretty close to cost price.   It feels like a good way to get the word out about bitcoin.

Sorry - forgot your PS about bitcoin URI support.

I know Electrum has added support for bitcoin links (that you can click in a browser and the details get put into the bitcoin client).
The Satoshi client and Armory I do not know if they are supporting it/ what their plans are.

There are also a couple of upgrades to the bitcoin URI format in the works.

One is a better, more future proof, format specified here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0021

Gary Rowe has just coded this up in Java and I am currently putting it into MultiBit.   The code we are donating to bitcoinj so that other bitcoinj clients will be able to use it.
ThomasV was the driver for this format so I am pretty sure Electrum will be supporting this (if he has not already).

ThomasV has also created the idea of email aliases and signed URIs, which is already in Electrum 0.38 and is described here:
http://bitcoinmedia.com/electrum-0-38-aliases-and-signed-uris/

I think aliases and signed uris are great and think that both MultiBitMerchant and MultiBit should support them.   Actually coding it up I am not sure when we will do it as both Gary and I are pretty much 'full' workwise at the moment.

Hi bitcoinspot.nl,

Thanks for your feedback on MultiBit and suggestions.   I have had a think as to implementing them:

Bigger QR code
I have put the 'show QR code bigger' functionality into the UI rework I plan to do for the 0.3 release.
The document with all the UI rework is here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eJ-vKf6yc5tLuvzKPJDiSwKzHophVYXH0rPfhpIUzq8/edit?hl=en_GB&pli=1

Email support
I have had a think about the emailing of transaction details.   It would be possible to add in configuration data for a link to an SMTP server (this is a standard email server type that most non-web email clients connect to).   It would then be possible to have a set up with:

1) Whenever you send bitcoins have the option to add in a recipient email address so that they get a message something like:
    "You have received X bitcoins to address Y.   The label was 'Z'.

   There would have to be a template file for the format of the email for it to be useful and localisable.
   You would probably want to CC yourself in too.

   This would be like the PayPal 'You have received funds' email you get.

2) Even when no recipient email was specified you could CC yourself for your own records.

This would give a "funds sent' email.

Tracking transactions
You also mentioned earlier keeping track of 'transactions not yet paid for' (Invoices).  This is much more work as currently there is no database backing MultiBit.   Transactions are only the basic transactions stored in the bitcoinj wallet.   To start tracking transactions for which there is no bitcoin transactions means adding a backing db.   I can see this coming but it is a big chunk of work - I am hoping I will be able to reuse the work Gary Rowe is doing on MultiBitMerchant when he completes this as it is similiar.

Order of work : What I am currently working on
I have put your email support suggestion into the proposed list of work for MultiBit 0.4.   The list of what work is in which version is here:
https://github.com/jim618/multibit/wiki

Currently I am doing some maintenance work and then will be making a push on having encrypted private key files and encrypting the wallets themselves.   After that I will be working on the UI refresh and basic exchange integration using Tim Molter's XChange library (the two are a bit entwined).   The 'show QR code bigger' functionality I will add in then.

That will be, more or less, everything in the 0.3 release so I will then get that out and start bug fixing.

After that I will start on the more detailed 0.4 use cases - including your email support requests - so I will probably ask for more details (or ask for you to review the use cases) at that point.

Also parallel to this is the Open Transactions fork of MultiBit in which they have added OT functionality.   I am planning to have a look at what they have done when I do the UI refresh/ basic exchange integration to see if this can be 'folded in' to the UI/ code.   This is a bit experimental at this stage so I have not put it explicitly in the deliverables.  

Hi there!

A little while ago i posted a message regarding a few wishes i had for multibit. I love the client a lot but would like to see a few extra options so that it can be used in a retail-setting.

- the option to show a qrcode of the adress in full-screen
- the option to add a email-adress to a transaction to send a payment request

Did you have time to look further into these ?

p.s.
Will the other clients be using the bitcoin-browser integration soon ?

Thanks.

I thought you would be interested in some future MultiBit development work we are starting up.

Tim Molter is a Java developer who is writing a library to integrate with the various bitcoin exchanges.
You can get more details of his project here:

https://github.com/timmolter/XChange/wiki/Milestones
https://github.com/timmolter/XChange/wiki/Exchange-support


We are planning to use XChange in both MultiBit and MultiBitMerchant, initially to get exchange rate data but later on to provide deeper integration with the exchanges.   (We are still working out what we can and cannot do).

It will be a while before it appears fully productised in MultiBit / MultiBitMerchant but it is very interesting work.

Hello FreeMoney,

At the moment the version of bitcoinj MultiBit uses does not rebroadcast. The best thing for your customer to do is:
1) Do a 'reset blockchain and transactions'. (This menu option is now in the 'Tools' menu). This will sync the wallet to what is on the blockchain. I.e. the untransmitted transaction will disappear.
2) Send the transaction again.

I always leave MultiBit open until the first confirmation comes in but that is not strictly necessary.

The version of bitcoinj that MultiBit is using is now a bit out of date and I know they have made various improvements to the peer functionality. I expect to be updating this in the next couple of weeks so this should improve things.

A customer has a tx that seems to not be broadcasting. How does Multibit handle this? Will it go eventually? Should he reload... what? And try again?

Thanks Jim. I had hoped someone had a similar setup. I am having difficulty getting Java 1.6 installed in this configuration. It looks like the standard client needs this Java version as well. I may not be able to use this old Mac as a dedicated wallet.

Hi Cobra,
There are a few things that Multibit uses that are specific to Java 1.6 so that is the minimum JVM specified.

The list if what was in Java 1.6 is here:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/features-141434.html

The drag and drop was improved in 1.6 and file locks I think were made more reliable.
The integration with the system look and feel was improved in 1.6. - this improves the screen redraws.

Jim

I was wondering if anyone has got MultiBit running on a G4 PPC Mac with OS 10.4.11?  OS is fully updated with Java SE 1.5, and it said 1.6 was required for MultiBit.  It looks like Apple never released this for PPC and when going to Java download they direct you to use software update on the Mac. I have read how to get this going through terminal but cant find the disk image anywhere "Java SE 6.0 Release 1 DP6".

The system requirements say 10.3 or greater but I assume it could mean an Intel mac only. Can someone confirm this?

Thanks

Jim Burtons talk at the bitcoin conference in Prague (for those who missed the post elsewhere)

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/eurobit-jim-burton-multibit-62176

(other eurobit talks listed here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.725830)

Good to hear you have your BTC back.

Yes - agreed that MultiBit's behaviour needs improving here.

Good news Jim.I've tested this and I can report success with this.Turned out I had 0.0342BTC (as 0.02BTC was sent to non working address and 0.009 was 'lost' when MBP battery lost power).

This is a very nice app for me.Just gotta work out those bugs.I feel that bugs like that are important to fix as they can affect laptop users (PC+mac) as they are most likely used on battery and when loss of power occurs (battery runs down) and the file doesn't save or no backup is made,info can be lost.

Hi film2240,

Sorry to hear about your MultiBit problems when you lose battery power on your MBP.

Depending on exactly what happened you may be able to recover your bitcoins by following the steps in:
http://multibit.org/help_troubleshooting.html

In the section headed :
'how to fix transactions that never confirm'

This resyncs your MutiBit wallet with what is in the blockchain.
Please can you let me know if this works or not.

I will also put your experience in as a bug in the bug system in github so that I improve MultiBit's behaviour in this area.

Bug feedback:
On my MBP,when the Multibit app is open but the battery runs out (loss of power on computer event),I lost my Bitcoins in this app.I only lost 0.009 BTC (so not much but still concerning).I think that a more rigid fail safe system needs to be implemented to guard against loss of power (auto ghost copies of the wallet file on different areas on HDD.I hope that this system would like clone the main wallet,then unload the main wallet and run everything from hte ghost copy so that if the ghost copy is corrupted by loss of power,it can recreate another working copy from a known good wallet file and the cycle repeats as much as needed).

I'm running Multibit 0.30 Snapshot version.Implement a recovery system that can detect a loss of BTC (corruption) then offer a step to restore the BTC (unspent BTC being lost).

A thorough article by Amir Taaki about MultiBit with embedded YouTube of the EuroBit MultiBit presentation:
http://bitcoinmedia.com/eurobit-jim-burton-multibit/

Added since November is the ability to click on a link in a browser which simplifies website purchases.

Hi HanSolo,

Thanks for pointing out that scenario. To be honest the various scenarios of duplicate keys needs much more testing before it is generally usable. For instance I notice with the current MultiBit code if you have the same key in multiple MultiBit wallets zero-confirm spend transactions do not appear in the 'other' wallet - only when the block appears does the transaction get in.

I imagine the code in other wallet providers will need work on them too for the scenario of a spend transaction for one of their wallet's keys that comes in from the bitcoin network. I would not rely on this functionality for your production systems yet.

Re: opening up MultiBit. At the moment the only interface out of MultiBit is to the Satoshi clients. We have started some preliminary work on connections between MultiBit and the exchanges and there is also the sister project of adding Open Transactions into a MultiBit code fork.

Gary Rowe has been working in a project called MultiBitMerchant which will be our web offering with a catalog etc.

Mainly because MultiBit will be an 'end user' system with, eventually, a keystore of the various private keys and credentials to connect to other systems I was not planning to add a programmatic interface to MultiBit itself. The main reason for this is from the security perspective. It is to minimise the attack surface.

Now that there are bots searching for and attacking bitcoind RPC interfaces that people open too wide it seems prudent for a end user client like MultiBit to keep it's attack surface as small as possible.

If someone has something they want to implement that was more 'server-ey' based and use the MultiBit code as a basis I have no problem with that. Just so long as they brand it as something other than MultiBit and spend the time and effort on securing their APIs.

I vaguely recall last year, playing with BitcoinJ, being concerned it could have problems accurately accounting for spending transactions involving its keys that hadn't been locally initiated. I don't recall all the details, something about assuming they'd already be in a pending mode, awaiting appearance in the blockchain. (It may have also have involved the situation where all the Outputs of a previous transaction belonged to its local keys, but the new transaction only used one of those Outputs. It seemed to forget the whole transaction in that case.)

I haven't been following the BitcoinJ development close enough to know if this has been fixed.

Are you confident that in your same-keys-in-two-wallets case, the BitcoinJ code properly recognizes spends from elsewhere, including cases where only some of several Outputs in the same prior transaction are spent?

Totally separate Multibit question: does it have any sort of web/RPC interface like the Satoshi client?

I have been having a bit of fun tonight seeing if I could get a MultiBit wallet and a http://blockchain.info wallet to both contain the same private keys.  

The idea is that with the same private keys they should both see the same spends and receives of bitcoin together in realtime.  The two wallets should both change in lockstep.

It works !

The trick is to create the wallet first in MultiBit, export the key(s) and then import the keys into your blockchain.info wallet.   You also want to delete any other keys in your blockchain.info wallet - obviously move the bitcoin on those keys out before you delete them.

Here are two screen shots with the same transactions appearing in the two user interfaces:

The BTC and transactions in MultiBit:
http://multibit.org/postImages/multiBitBlockChain.png

And the same in blockchain.info:
http://multibit.org/postImages/blockChain.png

Neat!