My ultimate goal is a self contained unit that you can feed a blank note or a roll of blank notes into and press print.

I bought a couple of Epson M-190 printer mechanisms.

http://www.epson.de/de/en/viewcon/corporatesite/products/mainunits/overview/9407

They're not much larger than the arduino and print using a ribbon

Unfortunately I haven't been able to get the arduino to print via them yet I'm pretty new to electronics so I'm having trouble deciphering the data sheet.

If there is enough interest I'd love to try and productize it.

Hi,

I've been working on an offline paper wallet generator for the last few weeks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7y_emuo68g

What do you think?

Source code is now available here.

https://github.com/spearson78/paperwallet

I'm also concerned with needing to refer to the reference client source code but the reference client is called reference for a reason 

My concerns are that as the reference client struggles to stay relevant for end users the core developers focus on performance rather than for use as a reference.
Performance and readability do not tend to go hand in hand.

Is the creation of better protocol documentation a better solution?
I personally think so, as the core aspects of the protocol are effectively set in stone we should be able to document them in an accessible/understandable manner.

As Gavin identified the creation and maintenance of specs however is time consuming.
The reference client developers are free to spend there time however they feel is best. There are always issues to be fixed and new features to be implemented. We wouldn't want to stop the reference client from moving forward.

I'd like to offer my help in updating/maintaining the documentation. I've made a few minor edits to the Bitcoin wiki for some of the under specified or unclear areas that I've found.

Where do you feel the content of the Wiki currently falls short?

In my experience I've found that the status of some of the BIPs are out of date and I've tracked a few of them down and updated their status.
Once a BIP is accepted I think we should aim to roll its implications into the base documentation.
This information is recoverable by comparing the reference implementation to the BIPs.

In what ways do you feel that the Reference client falls short as use as a reference?

In my experience something the reference client does not capture well are the "gotchas" that have been solved over time that are relevant to all Bitcoin peer implementations.
When reading the reference code you might not realize that a piece of code evolved to its current state to solve a serious issue and that the naive implementation wouldn't be sufficient.
Again this information isn't lost we can recover it from the history and issue tracker and present it in a more accessible way.

Try spending €10 and asking "Do you have change for a €100000 note?"

Thanks Stephen.

I noticed someone already set the status to "implemented and alive on the network". A little more verbose than "Final" but it gets the point across 

I also updated the date that BIP 16 became active based on the timestamp I found in the reference clients source.

According to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/BIP_0016 BIP-0016 is still in draft.

I thought this BIP was accepted along time ago.
Unfortunately I don't have the necessary permissions to edit the page (it was locked indefinitely)

Can someone with the necessary permissions unlock the page or update its status.

Thanks for the answers.

I updated the protocol specification on the bitcoin wiki to note that block 0 cannot be spent.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_specification#Transaction_Verification

I wasn't aware of this and it is quite counter-intuitive it could easily sneak into other bitcoin implementations and open the possibility for a block chain fork.

I don't see any clarification of how a fork would occur.

I only see descriptions of how the coins from block 0 are unspendable.


In fact it seems the unspendability of block 0 is a quirk of the implementation of the reference client.


Can you provide a link to the post that describes how Satoshi could create a fork if he were to spend the coins in block 0.

In This post

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=119530.msg1286692#msg1286692

Its mentioned that the output of block 0 can't be spent as this would allow Satoshi to fork the network.

Can someone clarify what this means.
I don't understand how being able to spend an output can lead to a fork.

Thanks,

Steve.