My (and many others') rant about Bitcoin-QT - page 3.

wumpus

hero member

Activity: 812

Merit: 1022

No Maps for These Territories

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on April 23, 2013, 12:49:01 PM

If the developers wants to it could have the word "change" next to it with a "?" for more info. Hiding addresses which have been sent funds is just a recipe for fund loss.

Sounds like a good idea, maybe with a checkbox "show change addresses", or a separate debug window that can show it all to nosy users.
I've already proposed that before, but never got around to making it.
If someone is bored and feels like implementing it, be my guest

DeathAndTaxes

donator

Activity: 1218

Merit: 1079

Gerald Davis

Well keypool is a great idea, otherwise the first time you send a tx any backup would become obsolete. Without a keypool (or deterministic wallet) to avoid fund loss would require continually backing up after every single transaction.

The issue isn't the keypool, the "issue" is that the QT wallet shows users some of their addresses and then (for their own good?) hides some of them. A user seeing they have 100 addresses and seeing their coins sent to one of their 100 addresses is going to be less confused then a user seing they only have 10 addresses (because the QT wallet "helps" by hiding the other 100) and then seeing their funds go to an address "not" in their wallet.

Abstracting information from users is a good design choice. Even if the unused keys in the keypool are hidden ONCE AN ADDRESS HAS FUNDS it shouldn't be hidden from the user.

i.e. user sends 1 BTC using 10 BTC output, 9 BTC is sent to unused keypool address 123. As soon as the tx is created address 123 should be added to the list of addresses. If the developers wants to it could have the word "change" next to it with a "?" for more info. Hiding addresses which have been sent funds is just a recipe for fund loss.

wumpus

hero member

Activity: 812

Merit: 1022

No Maps for These Territories

To be concrete: what are you trying to do?

How do you get from "I cannot list all addresses" to "I've been hacked!!!"?

Unless keys disappear from your wallet, which is impossible with the Satoshi client as it doesn't support deleting private keys, none of the things you mention should result in losing coins.

Anyway, if the address stuff confuses you, there is good news: The eventual goal is to abstract addresses (which are indeed a confusing concept, in retrospect "one-time paying codes" would have been better) away completely through the payment protocol, so you can pay to persons/merchants instead of random codes.

Showing addresses (both receiving and sending) encourages re-use, which is bad enough, and showing 100's of them isn't going to make it any better, I'm afraid it's only going to make people more confused (why do I have so many addresses?).

Frozenlock

sr. member

Activity: 434

Merit: 250

Bitcoin-qt requires you to download the blockchain.

Just by this measure, I would consider bitcoin-qt to be for advanced users.

whiskers75

hero member

Activity: 658

Merit: 502

Doesn't use these forums that often.

TLDR: Bitcoin-QT needs to make addresses and their uses clearer if it wants to be widely adopted.

How many panic posts do we get on here with a person confused with addresses thinking "they've been hacked!!!!111!!"? Quite a lot. Bitcoin-QT's "keypool" was not a good idea, and it should either be disabled by default, removed, or given a way to be managed easily, as this leads to the question: "I thought 1whiskrpGeZVd5ormX2ihifc9uB2YSz82 was my bitcoin address, but I sent BTC to it and it's gone! Why?" Bitcoin-QT does not let me see (if I wanted to) ALL my bitcoin addresses (+ keys) plus every other address I ever received BTC to or sent BTC from. More control is needed, and this leaves me firmly in the hands of Electrum and blockchain info (plus every other easy-to-manage wallet out there.)

[/rant]

Topic: My (and many others') rant about Bitcoin-QT - page 3. (Read 3535 times)