Few months ago I asked if there is some standards between Bitcoin wallets in the addresses field and I learn quite a lot from your answers,
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/problem-common-language-for-bitcoin-wallets-890911
I continue my little "research" and I would like to hear your opinion again,
With three years of familiarity with the Bitcoin technology and with Bitcoin products (I really tried almost all of them) It's clear to all of us that the technology is at her early days and still far from being ready for mass adoption.
Before any of us is running and try to establish the next "google" (I also fall in this dream) there is a lot of huge work in the aspect of standardization and creating good habits for the users.
I am happy to see the BIP Initiative develops, I think its only the start, and the future will bring much more ideas and good consensus that will create good order.
From my small experience, I see that the ground is unstable for businesses not only because of the volatility price, but also because of the technological complexity (not a big news..).
I study the history of the development of the Internet, the situation is very similar, breakthrough technology that few understand, and no one knows exactly how it will change the world.
I have some idea that's a little bit similar to BIP 70 and has other properties from other BIPs.
I am trying to find a way to add for every transaction between merchant and customer a "metadata" layer that contain information about the deal (name,ID number, warranty) ,the data will be in the blockchain embedded within the Bitcoin transaction that the customer sent. But as the transaction value is visible on the blockchain, the data will be visible only for the merchant and the customer by some Wallet special tool or key.
It's still a theoretical concept but I've seen some similar things already, I just think that something like that should be a standard in any wallet in the future that want to serve big business, and of course I want to here some opinion about how realistic is that solution.
What is it good for?
Standard like that will take us really close to "push of a button" payments system that Bitcoin and the internet are created for, it will take the Bitcoin addresses to a lower level in the technology layers and the users will work with the technology in a much simple way.
(its like the BIP 70 approach).
From the security side there will be more detailed and decentralized documentation for each "legal" transaction and it will include the receipt / warranty / whatever doc that the merchant think its useful. non of the sides can claim that he didn't got what he wants after the transaction is on the blockchin with both id's (unless the merchant didn’t supply the service, but thats a total new story on "when" the customer should send his money).
There are much more benefits for gathering all the information together into a one Bitcoin transaction, none of the participants have to keep the information store anywhere, they just need blockexplorer tool..
I wanted to be concise because it is only a concept for now.
I know, there are people who wanna buy drugs/weapon/child porn, this BIP is not for them, they can always use "old school" wallets that will not support this "regulation feature".
How its going to work?
I know how to add metadata into a Bitcoin transaction I suppose most of you know ,but we want the data to be visible only for two entities: merchant and customer.
We need the wallet to Identify that we are about to send money to some merchant addresses and he will automatically add my id/address/name to this transaction, in the other side the merchant need to find a way to put his data on that same transaction (receipt / warranty/product id … ) that’s tough challenge that can be implemented with some "ping pong" game between the customer wallet and the merchant "sale" device
(e commerce ,POS…).
Another problem is how to "hide" the metadata from the public? (Privacy problem) I saw couple of ways for hiding data in the blockchin, but the wallet should do that in a moment.
Every wallet that will support this kind of solution must to inform his users with EULA about the process and take personal details from them, I think that this is the future of the "regulated" Bitcoin services, everything will be automatic after a single register.
Its quite complicated and maybe it’s a total new platform and not just a BIP, as I says its just an idea that I can implement with hard work ,but I need to know if there are similar things out there or a better solutions.
Interfaces for regulation must begin to develop, this is nothing about hurting the Bitcoin user's privacy, we need to break away from that "drug dealer "character and understand that protocol-level standards will create strong ground for that Nobel technology.
Tnx…