What does the community need for this summer (2011)?

[jamesb]

Hello,

I've been in the Bitcoin community, mining in pools and discussing (a little) on these forums since January of this year. I've tried to search great ideas for the community: like offering my services (hosting and my development skills on the wiki/my site) which I offer 3-4 people at the moment but no development project yet!; like offering platform to help the community (this post).

I think I prefer asking the community about what they really want to see because there are so many ideas and projects that has started recently that it's hard to decide what is a good idea. Moreover I have this summer (for me already in a few days) some (1-2 months) this summer so I can spend them to do interesting and useful things. I have great skills in programming like in C/Python/PHP and I like making web site development (but I'm not good at designing).

Here is some ideas I have got on the top of my head :
- Exchange/Pay files or maybe real things (seems already made like the auctions sites: biddingpond.com OTC and on this forum);
- Grid/Mining platform for passwords/RSA/physics/math calculus with GPU (found here);
- Distributed file system (like that) or something related to the encryption problem people have these days (that post);
- I have little plans to enhance the GUI which leaks some features (like that post and clearer GUI);
- Futurist game (MMO RTS) which could use Bitcoin to buy/sell game items/things between players... or to buy items/subscription (too oldschool and already done by Dragon's tale);

I'm sure there are thousand of ideas which I've even never thought, so give it a try and post your ideas and opinions!

[FlipPro]

BUSINESSES , LOTS AND LOTS OF NEW BUSINESSES !

[qikaifu]

Considering bitcoin as a kind of cash, we need services like bitcoin-bank, bitcoin-paypal, etc. For the consumers, the bitcoin need much easier and fast to spend online(we have to wait 30-60min for 6 confirmation now), and for the merchants, they need a payment service, too.


the clearcoin and mybitcoin is not good enough. I hope you can develop a better and professional one. And the payment service is the fundamental of the future of the bitcoin. If any merchants want to sell goods and by accepting bitcoin, i don't think they would like to just run it on the bitcoin 0.3.23... They of course don't want to wait for 30min until they are able to give their customer a confirmation that the payments are succeeful .

So if you believe the bitcoin is a huge idea, they payment and storage service is as huge as bitcoin itself.

[jamesb]

@cablestudios: I think I may not be involved in these kind of huge project. I mean I cannot take risks at buying/selling house with Bitcoin because this is a very serious business and involves contracts for example. Moreover I don't think there was any house selling with Bitcoin yet. But I may make the web site which could serve as selling and buying platform. If there are people interested I would be happy to develop a such kind of site.


@qikaifu: Services like banks and paypal are seriously risky and involves big responsibility, we can see the mess that the Mt.Gox issue created in the community because of the security problem (but they offer great services to the community). Again creating a web site is totally different than managing and assuming it. And you may say "Bitcoin is all about money so it is risky and you have to take the responsibility for any service you make". That's really true (I can see it now). When you say a bank you think of 'keeping Bitcoins safe', but anyone could do that. Maybe instead you would mean 'lend money'? For that you should have an investment for the base.

You mentioned the clearcoin and mybitcoin but how can they be improved, what features do they leak? Maybe you mean to merge them in an unique platform? The transactions today are quite slow for confirmations (I saw '6' in the code) but it doesn't mean you cannot spend them, you could wait only 1 confirmation (maybe by patching bitcoin). So the main advantage of mybitcoin is that you don't wait for your transactions to be confirmed (are they other?). But I think they are instantaneous only if the transactions were inside mybitcoin, right?


Still open to new ideas. Let them come

[qikaifu]

@cablestudios: I think I may not be involved in these kind of huge project. I mean I cannot take risks at buying/selling house with Bitcoin because this is a very serious business and involves contracts for example. Moreover I don't think there was any house selling with Bitcoin yet. But I may make the web site which could serve as selling and buying platform. If there are people interested I would be happy to develop a such kind of site.


@qikaifu: Services like banks and paypal are seriously risky and involves big responsibility, we can see the mess that the Mt.Gox issue created in the community because of the security problem (but they offer great services to the community). Again creating a web site is totally different than managing and assuming it. And you may say "Bitcoin is all about money so it is risky and you have to take the responsibility for any service you make". That's really true (I can see it now). When you say a bank you think of 'keeping Bitcoins safe', but anyone could do that. Maybe instead you would mean 'lend money'? For that you should have an investment for the base.

You mentioned the clearcoin and mybitcoin but how can they be improved, what features do they leak? Maybe you mean to merge them in an unique platform? The transactions today are quite slow for confirmations (I saw '6' in the code) but it doesn't mean you cannot spend them, you could wait only 1 confirmation (maybe by patching bitcoin). So the main advantage of mybitcoin is that you don't wait for your transactions to be confirmed (are they other?). But I think they are instantaneous only if the transactions were inside mybitcoin, right?


Still open to new ideas. Let them come

Maybe you mean to merge them in an unique platform?  Yes.

Lend money: yes, you can lend money to those exchanges which provide advantage trading services like short selling bitcoin.

Risk: I agree with you that the bitcoin is far more risky as it's money business. To overcome the problem maybe we need heavy initial investment, I guess several millions of USD. (Dropbox has a 1.5m seed capital.) Maybe we have to wait until the price of bitcoin become even higher, or someone can raise a angle capital to invest in solving the security problem. And maybe sound unrealistic,  I strongly suggest entrepreneur team have a single person to raise angle or venture investment as the  Silicon Valley early strat-up always does.

Instantaneous only if the transactions were inside mybitcoin: There will be strong network effect. If someone successful build a service like this, it will be the one like microsoft in bitcoin. For example, the alipay take great market share in China, and the paypal take great market share in USA. Both merchants and consumers like the convenience within the 3rd party payment platform.

[Vernon715]

We need more brick and mortar stores in which to use bitcoins.