Bitcoin Forum

The dev blog is now up! blog.frog.li (http://blog.frog.li/)
All updates will be posted there.

Bitmessage is a great system.
However, it seems like Bitmessage won't become wildly popular unless it can be made ridiculously easy to use.
Frog will solve this by being a simple Bitmessage client for the web.

How will Frog work?
Frog will function very similarly to the Electrum Bitcoin client. The user's client reads data from the network off of a pool of servers.
When you open the Frog application in your browser, it automatically connects to an available Frog server that runs the complete Bitmessage software. When you send a message, your browser completes the proof-of-work necessary for propagation, and sends it to a Frog node. Then, the Frog node follows the standard protocol to send the message to the Bitmessage network.

But, wouldn't this decrease decentralization?
Not really. Since the birth of Electrum, the community has put up dozens of servers for the client to use. This has resulted in the creation of reliable supernodes that benefit the entire Bitcoin network.

Just like Electrum, anyone can put up a Frog server for the clients to use. So the servers will not be controlled by a centralized authority. Also, since a proof-of-work is required for sending Bitmessages, attacking these servers will be very difficult. Frog nodes will have all the protections a regular Bitmessage node has. So Frog will result in the creation of supernodes, which will help the entire Bitmessage network

Will it be open source?
Yes.

What's your timeline?
I am currently on my summer vacation and have a lot of free time on my hands. I estimate having a funtional beta by August.

Frog will help conquer surveillance by putting great tools into more hands. Help us make it a reality.

Funding was successful, and work begun a while ago.
Here is the GitHub (https://github.com/FrogMessenger).

I think this is a very much needed project! Wish you the best with it.

Thank you! I've begun a little work on some really early backend stuff, and moltenmich offered to make a better logo!

Perfect. A logo would be nice! Sounds like you are aiming for August to start development?

I'm aiming for August to be nearly done with development.

Servers and potentially the hiring of a designer. I can code, but I can not make things look pretty.
Here is my Github (https://github.com/Jaxkr), and here is some other (https://gist.github.com/Jaxkr/5745803) stuff (https://gist.github.com/Jaxkr/4600654).
Here is an article about me (http://www.timescall.com/news/longmont-local-news/ci_23032800/sunset-middle-school-student-wins-first-longmont-hackathon) (provides my identity and prevents me from scamming).
Unfortunately, I can't use those prize funds for this project as they were directly invested in my college account, to avoid taxes. :P

I hope this doesn't come off as mean, but learn to bootstrap. I think this is actually a great lesson for a young person to learn. Cause in the real world without a prototype no one gives funds. Even without testing the market you don't really get funds. I think you should try and do as much as you can with little or no funds. Your a programmer, try and get BTC3.5 by working for someone else.

Also don't tell your parents this but college is a scam. I just graduated from college (23yrs old), and let me tell you I am not even going to use my degree (Computer Science), cause I got into bitcoins so early, it makes no sense for me to get a job. I am actually starting my own company (of the many companies I started). I think your really talented, and you should be hustling in the bitcoin community. You will be rich trust me, especially since you know python that is one of those scripting languages, that great for web or desktop.

So get out and HUSTLE, just do what you got to do. Especially now since you live at home with no expenses you can bank all this money. Wait until your 17, you be driving a Benz maybe even a ferrari to school ;) Take my advice, bootstrap, hustle, you will be big... And when your starting your own companies you come to me for funding ok.

Define "hustle" and "bootstrap". I assume bootstrap means to have a reusable code base for every project, but I'm unsure about hustling, unless I'll be playing some pool.

Oh. Thank you very much for explaining that.

damn got funded! congrads! can't wait to see what you do with this!  ;D

Question: Do you plan on developing a mobile app?

I think the best way to make BitMessage REALLY take off (make it mainstream) is to give it smartphone functionality. Everyone now knows that the NSA can read their text messages. There are encrypted SMS apps but nothing close to the level of BitMessage. BitMessage on smartphones would REALLY give people a way to flip the finger to the NSA and the other cartels.

I guess BitMessage itself could do that, but since you're already doing something new, might as well add mobile functionality, and it seems what you are proposing is more suited to mobile phones.

Oh, and I second the advice about not going to college. You can make tons of dough starting bitcoin companies and doing coding work freelance. Don't need no stinkin' college degree. Don't feed into the system ;D

The entire web application will be responsive, so it will be usable on mobile devices right at launch.
I do plan to develop native iOS and Android apps in the future though. iOS will likely be first.

Here's a great logo by moltenmich that I may use!
https://i.imgur.com/AizkZOS.png

I love the logo very cool good job moltenmich!

And congratulations for being our 1st Bitcoin Crowdfunding project!  Couldn't have been a better project to get funded.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

It's a great idea! BM is a bit complicated and the idea of P2P is very attractive. The community will embrace such application.

It is so complicated I was like how the hell does this work. Hopefully, this will solve it.

GREAT!

i already thought bitmessage was easier to use than email. installing the program and running it was far more painless than filling out some form to get an email account. if you are going to make it even easier still than that sounds awesome.

It will be interesting to see how he does it but I hope it is true.

I will have a detailed plan up soon for everyone to read.

You'll have to fill out a form to use Frog, but all it will be is username, password, and repeat password. No existing email required.

Don't listen to him. Get your degree.
After my junior year, I took a year off that ended up being an eternity - I never graduated. Not having that piece of paper has closed so many doors for me.

Go to college and graduate and don't let anything stop you.

Yes certain degrees are required for certain jobs. I have met many, many people in the computer science sector and if your code is great, and you know what your doing, which this kid certainly does. He would not learn anything from college.

Love the frog art!  Can't wait to see what you come up with as far as an actual implementation.  I would love to beta test if possible.

i wouldnt make them repeat password and i wouldnt differentiate between account creation and login. just have it be assumed by your server that if someone tries to log in with information that doesnt currently exist than have it create a new account. if they type something wrong they will figure that out when they see that they have no messages in their inbox.

a card game i used to play did this, shadow era. check it out, its awesome how low the barriers are to playing that game. you dont even have to confirm your email, the email you enter doesnt even have to be a real email.

*edit* actually why not take it even further. instead of having username and password just have 1 field (userword?, passname?) i dont see any reason not to.

I second those who argue skipping college.  Like you I was programming in high school and college taught me nothing.   I now interview people on a regular basis and NEVER look at their college.   I would go so far as to say you don't want to work any place that does.

If you want a job send me a message and we can see how you can join the team.    You can make more money on you own than in a 9 to 5 job.

I regret going to college everyday, and if bitcoin didn't talk off I would be in $200,000 loans and I wouldn't be able to start my own companies, or anything I have to go to work.

I miss college :/

My advice, move to a college town, date college girls, sit in on classes like a student, and teach yourself everything.  All of the benefits, none of the costs.   Then use your time saved by skipping worthless general classes and performing pointless projects and instead focus on developing a real business.   

You could even claim you attended classes at school X and learned everything they had to offer if anyone asks.   

That could actually work for a number of classes. Anything larger than 50 students you could easily sneak in. Problem is, a lot of good classes are generally smaller and you'll have a harder time getting away with it. But that being said, you could get a job on campus in an office or something, and then befriend the professors you want to learn from. No doubt they'd be cool with you stopping by for interesting lectures.

My college experience had a lot to offer. But I do think there were requirements that just weren't necessary. It's really where you go and what you do with it.

Agreed, while I may have ended up paying a ton for college, it helped me broaden my view in the computer science realm and helped developed me into the "polyglot" that I am today, trying every tool available instead of using one tool, no matter how inappropriate.

It also looks good to the HR folks and gets you past many filters that exist. I do have to admit that I've run into people that have degrees and guess that they were the ones who "coasted" and didn't learn a thing... or have been so distant from college time-wise that the problem-solving skills and flexibility from then are long-gone (if ever present).

As a point - the whole road that got me to programming in security and eventually getting involved in Bitcoin was a "computer security" seminar where an entrepreneur presented and we got in contact... eventually leading me to my job right out of college that I've held and evolved up to the current moment.

Frog is a great idea.

However I think for bitmessage to be a success there needs to evolve a market for pow, people are not going to want to drain mobile computing resources to send potentially 100s of benign  msgs in 1 day. Or trade pow credits from other computing resources

Just my opinion but I think that is an important missing piece

You read my mind.
I already have a "stamps" program planned. For about .3 mBTC, you will be able to purchase a credit (or "stamp") that gets your messages processed by powerful PoW servers will a lot of GPUs.
This is how the service will pay for itself, and be usable on mobile devices.

I like your idea!
We need both a frog website and a frog app for iOS / Android / WinPhone so all noobs can start to use bitmessage ;)

Phonegap application for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone will be probably be available as soon as Frog leaves Beta. :)
Native apps will probably take a lot longer, though.

you may want to think of monthly/qtrly/annual flat fee instead, maybe stage it for personal, business, enterprise, etc - think of it like a mailchimp service or hosted email.  or for the phone app just give it away for free trial then some low yearly cost for up to XXXX msgs

maybe for large volumes you can do the per mail tx but otherwise you will just be processing for such small amounts and it will eat up cycles, and clog up the network with these micro tx.

to promote it let people send a couple hundred msgs for free per month if they had an account on here since some day (like what ripple/opencoin did) for the first year or whatever

instead of having to invest in the hardware if you allow the community to provide this proof of work, then you can act as an intermediary, collect your fee for the service, and pay the community for providing the hardware and hosting, rather then taking that on as an additional operation. but i am unsure how capable the current system is to support something like that. this also provides incentive for the greater btc community to support using this

I agree with this thinking ^^ .

Great project!

20 hours to go! very cool  ;D

Interesting ... so people with lots of mBTC can afford to send junk mails I suppose ... can a receiver set his 'postage' high enough to discourage low-ball (i.e. low difficulty PoW" messages from arriving?

Sender & Receiver address is anonymous.

The receiver could filter messages on the client side, but they would still flow through the network.

I think this is a great project. I tried to install Bitmessage on my computer, but only manual install is availible for OSX, and I must have done something wrong because I just can't get it to work. Having an easy to install and use version would be great.


I hope this doesn't come off as mean, but how do you get through college and not know how to use "your" and "you're" correctly?

I think that bringing Bitmessage to smartphones is probably one of the best ways of getting this protocol into the public space.
However, don't take this the wrong way since I do like the concept, I feel as though a seperate service to send/receive/work messages detracts security, or at least some anonymity, from the network. Not that it could be the case, it's just how I feel.

I would still love to see this come to fruition though.
I'd like to see the offering of more options like local PoW on the user's device (I know ARM isn't that powerful, but it's not Bitcoin mining) or their remote machine with BM PoW software installed, such as a home server.

Also, will you be writting the client in HTML5?

Congrats on the fully funded bitcoinstarter project!  :D

https://i.imgur.com/RvMWYtA.png

That is an adorable frog.  :D

Yes. The client will be using HTML5 technologies, such as a client side DB.
Also, I will be taking a lot of precautions to keep the service anonymous with the frog nodes. I'll write a blog post on this soon, and give you a link.

Thanks, I'll be looking forward to reading it, and congratulations on the funding.
One more question, since would your client is written in HTML5 (I'm assuming the PoW part will be separate or in asm.js) will it be making an appearance on the Firefox Marketplace once released?

I plan to release the client solely as a web app located on a site, rather than a browser app. This is for portability, so you can pick it up on your phone or another computer.

The proof of work is a sticky situation, and I might use asm.js or something of the like.
The exact 2 lines of code that do the PoW in PyBitmessage are
Unfortunately for me, this could not use more language specific features.
It's unpacking as a big endian unsigned long long. I haven't found a library to do this, as the node bufferpack (https://github.com/ryanrolds/bufferpack) and jspack (https://code.google.com/p/jspack/) don't support this type. I believe it's a limitation in JavaScript itself.
The next part of this in a double binary sha512 hash. I CAN do this in JS with nodejs code ported to the browser. However, the binary hashes don't match the python ones as JS can't handle binary data like that. The hex hashes match, though.

I'll go into detail on this when the dev blog is up. If anyone has any suggestions on how to implement this, I'd appreciate it.

 Email with PGP is already ridiculously easy to use, works with existing infrastructure and has been PROVEN to be secure.

 -bm

This is an argument against Bitmessage in general. You should talk to Atheros about that.
Also, email with PGP isn't truly anonymous nor is it decentralized. Your mail server could be seized or go down at any time.

part of the value proposition with BitMessage was it was supposed to be easy to use.

seems the only remaining value proposition is "I Haz A Blockchain".

bitmessage is as easy to use as


 .... how exactly could you manage to get confounded by that?

bitmessage doesn't use a blockchain ... at least get your facts right if you are going to be the uber-critic ... btw, what have you done recently?

PGP mails are a major pain in the ass to use in a properly secure way, particularly alongside regular plain-text mails in the same inbox and suffer from other security weaknesses ... and it is a kludge on top of an insecure layer so will never be a long term solution.

Bitmessage might not be perfect, but it is a great start ... but has none of the problems you have pointed out.

if it's easy to use, why the startup?

uber-critic?  unfortunately the environment around bitcoin appears to be one where no one ever questions anyone's claims, and thus erroneous ideas seem to float around unchecked.  If that's the kind of thing you want, then go right ahead.  I guess with experience, you learn to have a zero-tolerance policy for BS.  If you want to contribute and support a project simply because it's 'cool', then go right ahead.  Talk to me again when you're all grown up and ready to do something real with your life.

PGP works perfectly fine and is KNOWN to be secure.  Why don't people contribute to one of the may PGP/email projects out there?  or encrypted IM?  There has been loads of work on how to do secure messaging, why Bitmessage?  Does it even suggest where it fits in this realm?  How it compares to other similar technologies? 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_messaging

You're calling me ubercritical, but I have to say it's a bit arrogant to ignore and entire FIELD of study.  Where is the work on why this is an improvement over other secure messaging protocols?  There have been hundreds of publications in this area.

time to grow up guys.

First of all, before criticizing Bitmessage please understand how it works. You can read the whitepaper here (https://bitmessage.org/bitmessage.pdf). Bitmessage doesn't use a blockchain or anything very similar.

Secondly, Bitmessage is still tied to the desktop client. This app is a portable web client.

sounds like its for mobile devices ... didn't you read the OP either? ... you're just trolling again aren't ya blueman? and I think he means one-click easy to use as opposed to three CLI easy-to-use

but hey you want to argue semantics you'll find something I'm sure ... in 1 - 2 - 3 ... and there he is

you guys are seriously hilarious.

so you're going to take away Bitmessage's decentralization to make it 'easier' to use.  Why dont I use Cryptocat, GPG Tools, or any number of other secure messaging protocols out there?  Did you even stop for moment to think how this product compares at the end user level?

this is too funny.

I notice also these projects seem to have an abundance of input from Graphic Designers, Video Script Producers, Cheerleaders, etc.

It's kind of unfortunate really what has happened to Open Source.  It used to be about engineering, now it's about making these 'projects' to attract investors and the like.  It's nothing about what it was originally.

I'm not very knowledgeable when it comes to this sort of thing, but would it be possible for you to use the C++ library in JS through Emscripten?

That's a possible solution.
I'll probably just strictly limit the amount of stamps that can be bought, though.

I just registered the domain frog.li, and have pointed it at the dev blog.
http://blog.frog.li/ is the blog, and frog.li simply redirects to the blog, as there isn't anything there yet.

Hey,

I pledged 0.7 BTC and am willing to help you out as much as I can. I've been thinking about a project like this and I'm very happy more people are enthusiastic. Need help with the website, or any programming work?

Hey! You're one of the mysterious pledgers! Hello and thank you. :)
The Bitcoinstarter guy hasn't sent me the CSV yet, so I am completely in the dark on the identities of the pledgers.

Currently, development is going pretty smoothly. If you feel like it, help would be appreciated. I have PM'd you.

First congratulations on being the first project Bitcoin Crowdfunded project! I'll be sending it over the CSV file in a few minutes. I'll be following your blog to see how things work out also.

Also, proud to have our 2nd (https://bitcoinstarter.com/projects/18) ever project funded! Thank you to everyone who supports these projects.

Jaxkr

You may want to look into this bounty for an android BM app

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=246692.0

I just saw the same thing and thought of this project good catch.

what happened to your blog?

A hard drive failure. Lost all my Octopress stuff. Will recreate soon. :)
I'm really close to being done.
Locking because I'll make new thread when I announce it, and this one's outdated.