The original Bitcoin client sucks.

[Cara Navarre]

It takes forever to get started and I bet most people who are new to Bitcoin pick it up, get tired of it and move on.

Why hasn't the development team created a thin client yet?

[Jan]

It takes forever to get started and I bet most people who are new to Bitcoin pick it up, get tired of it and move on.

Why hasn't the development team created a thin client yet?

Without the original client we would all be fucked. It is the only fully validating bitcoin node in existence. There are many alternative light clients. Take a look at http://lovebitcoins.org/getStarted.html

[paraipan]

I have the odd impression you need to buy something really fast... ? Then don't use the desktop wallet if you're in a hurry!

[Cara Navarre]

It takes forever to get started and I bet most people who are new to Bitcoin pick it up, get tired of it and move on.

Why hasn't the development team created a thin client yet?

Without the original client we would all be fucked. It is the only fully validating bitcoin node in existence.

Servers and miners can run it. Regular, dumb people like me don't care and don't want to bother with it.

If you want Bitcoin to continue to be a small, geek currency, then please keep forcing this slow, CPU-intensive software down our throats.

As for your lite clients, people who type "Bitcoin" in google never learn about them. It took me forever to find http://blockchain.info/wallet because it doesn't get the privilege of being called "official".

[kangasbros]

I agree. The block chain download is making newbie users hate bitcoin. However there are better alternatives in the pipeline: http://electrum-desktop.com/

And web wallets work pretty well for small amounts IMHO...

[jim618]

The satoshi client is THE reference client - without it there is no bitcoin network.

You can imagine that the devs have to be conservative with any changes they make and make sure everything is tested as best as possible. This inevitably takes much longer to make changes.

By keeping the bitcoin network stable and working smoothly they ARE indirectly helping to create lightweight clients and web wallets etc. Everyone else relies on them. With the limited manpower all open source projects have I presume they concentrate their firepower on "keeping the engine running smoothly" and leave the eye candy to other devs.

[JompinDox]

I'm pretty sure bitcoin is losing HUGE amounts of users just because bitcoin-qt appears so prominently on google and bitcoin.org. Most normal people usually don't bother 'looking for alternative clients.'

When they try bitcoin-qt and realize it takes many hours (or days!) to initialize, and consumes many gigabytes of bandwidth per month, they just don't bother looking further. Kinda sad.

[Mike Hearn]

We know that startup time whilst syncing the chain is a problem. There's no need to bait us - nobody wants Bitcoin to be a small, geek-only currency, certainly none of us on the development teams do.

Lightweight clients have been written. I have spent the last 2 years writing code that is widely used in their creation. If you go to bitcoin.org and click Clients you'll see some of them. In fact Jim, the author of Multibit which is a lightweight client, already posted on this thread. He was just too modest to plug his own software.

So why is the Satoshi client still the version in the top right of the home page? There are several reasons why we're not ready to fully push lightweight clients yet:

• One is that we still need lots of people to run the Satoshi client. Servers and miners are, by themselves, probably not enough right although in the longer term that's definitely the way things will evolve. If not enough people run the reference client we may start to run out of sockets again like we did last year during the wave of press coverage. If we run out of sockets people can't get connected to the network at all.
• The lightweight clients that exist today all have problems of various kinds. Ones based on bitcoinj have various missing features and other things that are considered important (like wallet encryption, though Jim is working on that). Systems like Electrum or the blockchain.info wallet have surprising privacy and security properties that are difficult to explain to people.
• There are changes coming down the pipeline that will dramatically improve the performance of the reference client, dropping chain download time significantly.

I think there's a general consensus right now in the core development team that Bitcoin, in its current state, isn't quite ready to go as a currency for the everyman (or everywoman in your case). It's not just performance. Other parts of the system need work too - it's still too hard to secure your wallet for both end users and service operators, fee handling needs improvement, the software all needs auto update engines. Even basic things like bitcoin: URI handling doesn't work right yet.

So even if tomorrow we redirected everyone to MultiBit or Electrum or blockchain.info from the home page, we would simply swap one set of problems for another. The real solution is to improve all the clients in parallel and then at some point we should be able to build consensus around pushing users towards one or two lightweight clients, whilst simultaneously asking people who have the resources to run the classic client.

Summary: It would be a mistake to prioritize on-boarding new users above all else right now because they'd just hit problems later. The block chain download time acts as a natural throttle on our growth and ensures that anyone who makes it through has the interest and tolerance needed to manage Bitcoins other issues.

[Projects]

I do not really mind the original client to be honest, it does its job and if its kept up to date on a regular basis it doesnt take too long to catch up.
I agree though that new users may be put off.

[bitsire]

I do not really mind the original client to be honest, it does its job and if its kept up to date on a regular basis it doesnt take too long to catch up.
I agree though that new users may be put off.

+1 - I like the original client and I actually look forward to firing it up and watching my payments come in from my deposits as it syncs with the network (yes, I am a total nerd I know). As for it being daunting to new users, I certainly agree that the time needed to download the blockchain can be considered a deterrent but I also can't help but feel that if someone has problems with copying/pasting, typing in labels, selecting from an address book and pressing a send button then maybe that person shouldn't be sending money over the Internets with any method 

[Gavin Andresen]

From an email I sent to somebody concerned about bitcoin usability just a couple of days ago:

Making the reference Bitcoin application more usable isn't a high priority for me right now.

The high priority is making it safe to use, even if your computer gets infected by malware. I WANT it to be hard and geeky to use so only geeks who are able to keep their computers secure run it.

Also, the "download and run software on my computer" way of doing things is dying. The vast majority of ordinary users will be using Bitcoin on their smart-phones or through a web browser in the near future....

[niko]

As for your lite clients, people who type "Bitcoin" in google never learn about them. It took me forever to find http://blockchain.info/wallet because it doesn't get the privilege of being called "official".

This is a legitimate concern. Perhaps a simple change of wording on bitcoin.org and other prominent sites would help?

[JompinDox]

From an email I sent to somebody concerned about bitcoin usability just a couple of days ago:

Making the reference Bitcoin application more usable isn't a high priority for me right now.

The high priority is making it safe to use, even if your computer gets infected by malware. I WANT it to be hard and geeky to use so only geeks who are able to keep their computers secure run it.

Also, the "download and run software on my computer" way of doing things is dying. The vast majority of ordinary users will be using Bitcoin on their smart-phones or through a web browser in the near future....

Fair enough, but at least put up a "geeks only"-type notice (phrased more politely, of course) on the front page then.
Letting ordinary people waste hours or days of their time on downloading the reference client AND the 3GB blockchain,
without any obvious warning, is a little disrespectful IMHO.

[Domrada]

I don't see any reason why we can't have the best of both worlds.  Why can't the Satoshi client operate as a thin client when it's first installed, and then switch to full client mode in the background when the blockchain becomes up to date?

[kwukduck]

I think some kind of 'warning' or note that the original client is still very 'technical'? could be an idea to point the average user to web-wallets, light-weight clients or mobile clients.

[ThomasV]

I don't see any reason why we can't have the best of both worlds.  Why can't the Satoshi client operate as a thin client when it's first installed, and then switch to full client mode in the background when the blockchain becomes up to date?

+1

[paraipan]

I don't see any reason why we can't have the best of both worlds.  Why can't the Satoshi client operate as a thin client when it's first installed, and then switch to full client mode in the background when the blockchain becomes up to date?

+1

+2, maybe use those checkpoints for something good

[Fluttershy]

Yes, use an alternative client. Just like MT GOX was doing when they sent coins to an invalid address. Seriously, don't do it; the original client is more reliable than something that's been slapped together.

[kangasbros]

I don't see any reason why we can't have the best of both worlds.  Why can't the Satoshi client operate as a thin client when it's first installed, and then switch to full client mode in the background when the blockchain becomes up to date?

I disagree. There are other thin clients being developed. Satoshi client should remain a full-fledged stable client, it makes no sense to try to appeal to everyone with it.

[Gandlaf]

From an email I sent to somebody concerned about bitcoin usability just a couple of days ago:

Making the reference Bitcoin application more usable isn't a high priority for me right now.

The high priority is making it safe to use, even if your computer gets infected by malware. I WANT it to be hard and geeky to use so only geeks who are able to keep their computers secure run it.

Also, the "download and run software on my computer" way of doing things is dying. The vast majority of ordinary users will be using Bitcoin on their smart-phones or through a web browser in the near future....

Thats fair enough, but wouldn´t it be possible to include an up to date snapshot of the current blockchain (updated on a daily/weekly basis), as an option. Whilst the disk space being taken up is substantial the real issue seems to be the time it takes to catch up when first installing the client. Downloading via the network takes for ever. I do get that you may not want to do that via bitcoin.org. but how about providing it via a torrent link for example?