Topic: New Colorful Currency (Read 616 times)

As someone who has their fair share of stupid/seemingly pointless ideas, I can't help but ask myself: Why? What is it good for? I mean, apart from being a pretty avatar picture on this forum (Hey, use case!!), it doesn't seem to have any advantages over existing solutions. Technically, it is a bitch, too: If you take a photo, it is extremely difficult to determine exactly the right colours (unless you make it really easy and go for RGB only, or something like that. But just think of the white-gold/blue-black dress thing…). Additionally, I am not to sure about the "beauty factor" of such a solution.
Here are however some ideas I had, that probably are, all in all, just as pointless:

- Encryption by colour:
    -- You create an image like above from a private key.
    -- You "divide" this picture into two or more images, with their hues being randomly split and delete the original image
    -- Only if you have all images and stack them, somehow adding their colours (the easiest probably would be to divide it into R-G-B), you can create the original "private key" image
    -- You could probably generate a private key by stacking actual images, for example from your family, or whatever (maybe of your fingerprint? But that's a different story).

- Using the address to create fractal art/vectorbased images:
    -- I don't know how you would "reverse engineer" the address from there, but maybe it looks pretty
 

Okay, I just did a quick one for Bitcoin addresses. Bitcoin addresses are 26-35 characters long containing a-z, A-Z and 0-9.

Hue, Saturation, Value

a=0,100,100
b=10,100,100
c=20,100,100

etc.

A=0,100,50
B=10,100,50
C=20,100,50

etc.

0=0,0,0
1=10,0,0
2=20,0,0

etc.

100,0,0 means blank space, there will always be at least 1 blank space on bottom right, there is room for 36 colors, but max character length is 35.

Here is what my deposit address on Bustabit would look like (scaled up, actual colors are 6 by 6):

you can just as well translate existing coin addresses to some color scheme

It's okay.

I can always change what it looks like, now I'm going to look at other randomly generated images for some inspiration.

you had a good idea, but it is as ugly as QR code... sorry but it aint beautiful my friend.

"Your storage and computational requirements go way up, and the chances of cracking it go way up. "

They don't go up that much, there is still an incredibly low chance of a collision. It's not something you ever need to worry about. The storage could be an issue though yes.

"This is an innovative idea I would love to see how will this come up when implemented, but also like to ask what if the user is color blind. What would be the remedy?"

I hadn't thought about that actually, but it doesn't mean each image will look exactly the same. We will show the hex values along side the color and they can then memorize what it looks like.

"So instead of a bitcoin bar-codes to scan an address we could scan one of your colorful boxes instead? They look nice since they are eye catching but if they are easily crack-able like one of the above posters has stated then this would obviously be a major problem. If you could make it work its different so might take off quite well."

Yes, as I said there is still much more to think about if this is to be even feasible. Then if it happens it is feasible it still has to be developed.

"QR code already allows you to treat an address or a key as an image. It uses a library which is widespread.  Are you going to re-implement it from scratch?"

QR codes are ugly, that's all I'm going to say on that.

"Couldn't you just create an app that converts bitcoin addresses (or pretty much any other coin address as well) to these pictures and vice versa? Why create a new coin for it?"

That's a good point, I may do it for Bitcoin first and if people like it then make a coin base around it. That would be a lot easier and allow me to see if it's something people would like to see/use though.

Couldn't you just create an app that converts bitcoin adresses(or pretty much any other coin adress as well) to these pictures and vice versa? Why create a new coin for it?

QR code already allows you to treat an address or a key as an image.
It uses a library which is widespread.
Are you going to re-implement it from scratch?

So instead of a bitcoin barcodes to scan an address we could scan one of your colourful boxes instead? They look nice since they are eye catching but if they are easily crackable like one of the above posters has stated then this would obviiopusly be a major problem. If you could make it work its different so might take off quite well.

This is an innovative idea I would love to see how will this come up when implemented,but also like to ask what if the user is  color blind.what would be the remedy ?

Your storage and computational requirements go way up, and the chances of cracking it go way up.   

I'm making this thread to see if people would be interested in or would find no use for a new type of currency.

The currency would be every bit the same as Bitcoin with a few exceptions, one of which being the major de facto difference.

The public keys will be stored in an image instead of a hash in text. These images will be 36x36 pixels, containing 36 other "images" which will contain 6 different colors, all of which placed randomly but they will all appear 6 times.

These images have been scaled up 6x. On a wallet containing many addresses there will be plenty of room for them and they won't make your head spin.

This means an image can look like this (extremely unlikely, but still possible):



They cannot however, look as such:



Since these are addresses represented as images and not text instead of copying/pasting you will be downloading/uploading your addresses. I hope that a feature can be added so you can copy and paste the image address also.

If my math is correct then the chance of a collision will be 1 in 4.7383813e+18.

There is still 90% of this project which has to thought out, and then a 100% of the project which has to be developed.

Lastly, the hex values that will be in the image are: #FF0000 (red), #FFFF00 (yellow), #00FF00 (green), #00FFFF (cyan), #0000FF (blue), #FF00FF (purple).