Topic: payment with a message - page 2. (Read 2740 times)
A unique payment address adequately identifies a bill of sale. Payment to that address is verifiable in the blockchain. A message in the transaction itself is of very limited use because they are small.
In my opinion, it is not the right solution to attach the message to the bitcoin transaction itself.
I'll explain why: everything you attach to the transaction is forever part of it, and will be stored forever (or at least until it can be pruned) by every single node in the system. Yes, this is the intended behaviour for transactions, but there is no need for them to be more than the bare minimum for the network to verify its validity.
When you want to attach a message to a transaction, this is essentially some private communication between you and the receiver of the transaction. Showing it to the world is both a burden, and a decrease of privacy. Indeed it would be possible to encrypt it, but that will not make it anymore necessary.
Realize that in most cases, you as sender of a transaction are already communicating with the receiver by other means. Be it a website, e-mail, instant messaging, real-life communication, .... There is no need to replace this existing communication with the blockchain, which is a very slow and expensive beast to maintain, and it would benefit us all not making it even more expensive than it already is.
Now, only the receiver actually cares about your transaction. In fact, he should be the one responsible for getting it into the block chain if he wants that, and not the sender. The current network and the architecture around it seem to have settled for using the blockchain both for confirming transactions as for getting them to their destination. This is not necessary, as you could easily envision prepared transactions being files that you can just send to someone (who will then verify it, and send it to the p2p network if he cares) via an http protocol, or via e-mail, ...; essentially reusing the communication channel you already had (imagine a merchant's website, you click "click here to pay", that opens your bitcoin client/ewallet, creates the transaction, and sends it directly to the merchant). In such a system, it would be easy to attach whatever message you or the merchant wants you to attach to it to that file. It would travel along with the transaction, and could be checked easily. However, it doesn't need to ever end up in the block chain itself. Nobody cares about it there.
Clearly this requires a different way of using bitcoin than we currently do, but it is closer to how Satoshi envisioned it (the currently deprecated send-to-IP system was how he intended transactions to take place, not via send-to-address). Still, I believe this is how transactions will happen at some point in the future.
I'll explain why: everything you attach to the transaction is forever part of it, and will be stored forever (or at least until it can be pruned) by every single node in the system. Yes, this is the intended behaviour for transactions, but there is no need for them to be more than the bare minimum for the network to verify its validity.
When you want to attach a message to a transaction, this is essentially some private communication between you and the receiver of the transaction. Showing it to the world is both a burden, and a decrease of privacy. Indeed it would be possible to encrypt it, but that will not make it anymore necessary.
Realize that in most cases, you as sender of a transaction are already communicating with the receiver by other means. Be it a website, e-mail, instant messaging, real-life communication, .... There is no need to replace this existing communication with the blockchain, which is a very slow and expensive beast to maintain, and it would benefit us all not making it even more expensive than it already is.
Now, only the receiver actually cares about your transaction. In fact, he should be the one responsible for getting it into the block chain if he wants that, and not the sender. The current network and the architecture around it seem to have settled for using the blockchain both for confirming transactions as for getting them to their destination. This is not necessary, as you could easily envision prepared transactions being files that you can just send to someone (who will then verify it, and send it to the p2p network if he cares) via an http protocol, or via e-mail, ...; essentially reusing the communication channel you already had (imagine a merchant's website, you click "click here to pay", that opens your bitcoin client/ewallet, creates the transaction, and sends it directly to the merchant). In such a system, it would be easy to attach whatever message you or the merchant wants you to attach to it to that file. It would travel along with the transaction, and could be checked easily. However, it doesn't need to ever end up in the block chain itself. Nobody cares about it there.
Clearly this requires a different way of using bitcoin than we currently do, but it is closer to how Satoshi envisioned it (the currently deprecated send-to-IP system was how he intended transactions to take place, not via send-to-address). Still, I believe this is how transactions will happen at some point in the future.
unfortunately ECDSA does not work for encryption
however, a hash of a receipt would be fairly private and it would allow the receiver to know what transaction it is
however, a hash of a receipt would be fairly private and it would allow the receiver to know what transaction it is
Possible: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script#Transaction_with_a_message
Preferably the message should be encrypted using the recipients public key as well so it's not stored in clear text in the block chain. I don't know how that would work with more advanced transactions though, such as multisig transactions.
Preferably the message should be encrypted using the recipients public key as well so it's not stored in clear text in the block chain. I don't know how that would work with more advanced transactions though, such as multisig transactions.
I was just wondering, is there any Bitcoin client that supports including a short message in a payment transaction (such as "donation", "thanks", "gym subscription", whatever)?
If not, is it in theory feasible in the future (i.e., does the current protocol and blockchain format allow for it?)
If not, is it in theory feasible in the future (i.e., does the current protocol and blockchain format allow for it?)
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