This needs more thought. I think it is an interesting suggestion, but at first sight it looks like Bitcoin is better suitable for that purpose. Your suggestion undermines what Monero stands for: privacy and untraceability. It unveils that Alice sends amount X to Bob.

Would it be possible with an app (having a central server) like Whatsapp / or with encrypted messages as Telegram for example uses? The mobile wallet still needs to communicate with a node, so I am not sure how this would work without revealing information about the transaction to the app's creator/server. Any suggestions?

I know you've said many times now that the GUI won't cause wider adoption outside of our crypto bubble, but do you have any suggestion for how that adoption might be achieved?

EDIT: or rather, what in your mind is the biggest obstacle that needs to be overcome for adoption to start happening?

The original conversation was based around the question of what was driving the markets, which led into the question of what effect the GUI would have on the price.

Do you accept that XMR is underpriced?

@Johnny Mnenomic

You're either naive or you're just micro-fudding for the sake of a short-term trade.

You can't sell a car by saying "This is a car. Do you want it or not?".

The network is ultimately secured by speculators - people injecting money into the system for purposes of profit. This gives rise to a social foundation from which all other objectives can follow.

Look at Dogecoin: Stick a dog on a coin and say "moon!" and suddenly it has a $50 million market cap. Does it work? Fuck no - it was technologically crippled and would have remained that way had Litecoin not saved it. But who cares about any of that if it's going to make you rich.

Speculation energy drives the narrative and facilitates the technological and social fundamentals by way of increased interest.

Show me a coin that is an exception to that. Bitcoin is the same. And so too is Monero.

I'd hazard a guess that many early adopters of Monero are here because they read a single post by someone who looked vaguely intelligent with a nice suit - a post that promised the moon no less.

The fact that the person turned out to be a little bit batshit crazy and started talking about the coming of the Messiah as well as a whole load of other crap is neither here nor there.

The result is that Monero now has a market cap of over $10 million, the 5th biggest crypto community overall, and the biggest community in terms of similarly untraceable competitors.

Whether you realise it or not, this has happened as a consequence of moon-promise which is the predominant driving force of all cryptocurrencies.... at least in terms of caretaking its initial infancy. It doesn't matter when the devs say "Don't buy Monero - it won't make you rich!"... sure I understand why they say that but no-one actually pays attention to it.

So right now, Monero is massively underpriced. People understand that and they are here to profit.

The consequences of that is an incredibly electric community industry that lays down, consolidates and amplifies all concurrent considerations of the tripod - notably the political base and the technological base.

If you're one of the original Monero bods who is used to a small community atmosphere polarised around the kind of techno-geeky pragmatism that says "Meh - it's a GUI - so what?" ... if that's you, then it's time to pull your trousers up, wave the Monero flag and blow a whistle ... because if you don't, everyone else is just about to. The Monero ecosystem has changed and is changing even further.

Don't get caught with your pants down. It's now time for a different type of moon.

20 years ago, only "crypto-anarchists and privacy activists" actually gave a shit about securing personal data with encryption.

Then some celeb i-pads got hacked, Snowden won an Oscar, and the .gov demanded Apple destroy their own products' utility.

Using command line for many people - such as anyone non tech-savvy or, say on a Mac - is a totally foreign and too-much-to-ask chore.   Some people (including me) don't like holding a lot on an exchange or in an online wallet either.  For someone who can’t get their head around using command line to make a wallet etc. (and don’t say it’s ‘so easy’ – it isn’t) it makes the project look under-developed, which is not a good reflection on how Monero is.

Yes, a killer payment app or a next generation improvement on a node /QT type wallet would be better to have, but I think not having a GUI is ammo for detractors and an excuse to leave Monero alone for many people.

‘Why no wallet?’ is a fair ask.

No it doesn't just do that. It is a decongestant that effectively lays the foundations for future expansion - both social and technical. It is clearing the decks and is level up - a significant milestone for Monero, not just in terms of service advancement but also in terms of demonstrable management and group industry.

It's a major achievement and a whole new chapter in Monero's future, and thus is a perfect modulator for market action which increases market volume and speculator interest, hence bringing increased vibrancy into the whole Monero ecosystem.

Sure, I don't run a node for Btc, but that coin is several iterations past efficient CPU mining. But Monero, afaict, will be still CPU mineable, right? THAT's my motive for running a node. As someone else here pointed out, going through the hoops to mine Monero NOW is a "chore". But once the gui is out, if it has one-click smart mining, I'm there! Giving everyone a motive and an easy way to run a node is decentralization in action, as exciting in its way as fungibility and privacy!

Johnny doesn't seem to realize adding a coin with no GUI is basically volunteering to teach a potentially unlimited number of n00bz everything from Command Line 101 to the theory of functions, and how that all relates to RPC, daemons, etc.

With all due respect, what you're saying is crazy.

Of course a bundled GUI will result in new adoption. You can't just assume that everyone knows how to use terminal.... they don't.

The userbase associated with a $1B marketcap is not the same userbase as a cabal of niche crypto-developers who take certain technological fundamentals for granted.

It should also be patently obvious that an easy-to-use GUI gives confidence to third-parties who may be mulling over integration.

What about the idea that poor ease-of-use serves as a deterrent to third party integrations and services?

A GUI is of critical importance for the next level of adoption.

So. It would be great if MyMonero.com was added with a such feature which can be used to check a balance of an address. It would be a kind of a online view-only-wallet. By just giving the address and the viewkey the balance can be seen.

One slow weekend night long ago I read through the entirety of Monero's bitcointalk historical ANN thread(s). The logic provided by TFT was that 1 minute blocktimes would increase the distribution of money in the initial emission phase when the frequency of solo mining would be highest (1 block finder every 1 minute vs every 2, so twice as many lottery drawings per day). There was no real agreement by the community that it was a good idea (due to increase orphan rate), but a post-hoc (after the fact) rationale ... or perhaps appeasement.... was that the blocktime would eventually move back to 2 minutes, after the primary emission phase was over. It was thought that the low transaction volume during the initial phase (as would be expected with a young currency) would prevent a high frequency of orphans caused by the 1 minute blocktime. So, the move back to 2 minutes, for those that have been here, is all going to plan.

Or I could have this wrong. Feel free to read the old threads

Thank you for your replies, this must mean that the premise behind SDC anonymity must be somewhat sound/reasonable (?) although yet to be reviewed.
If the premise behind SDC anonymity was completely ridiculous or unreasonable there would have been mention of it from somewhere at the least.
I am curious as to what the differences between SDCs proposed anonymity and XMRs anonymity is... I will look into it unless you can point me in the right direction. That would save me much time and be greatly appreciated 

My fear is that we will miss this black swan event, because (among other things) we have no official gui, and only a tiny exchange called Poloniex.

I don't think so... and I do believe you and I have hashed this out before . Again, I think all thats necessary is a subset of the blockchain to provide adequate ring partners. So regardless of how large the whole blockchain is, you can maintain simply 2 gigs of random blockchain data and your wallet can select from those outputs. This 2 gig subset will refresh and change on some schedule.

Trust me, if I knew how to code this is what I would figure out.

Well, that and remote transaction pushing. Stupid work eating my time.

Well thats gonna be the case for *any* cryptocurrency. With this line of logic, the next major effort should be electrum style infrastructure.

That said, what will a future XMR wallet look like for the "average joe" Monero user in, say, 2020?

Have you seen how ugly and inconvenient it is? That might be the reason.