Is this address format (e.g.: BTC.443860.3.56318) a good idea?

[JFC]

Hi Danny,
first let me give you triple thanks for your comments.

First, because it is obvious you have taken time and consideration to read and reply my long post.
Second, because it is clear you understand the issues at stake here and have written a well articulated answer stating your point of view.
Third, because it is also obvious you hate the idea, which I totally respect. And yet you managed to write a long post without any personal attacks.

It doesn't matter IMHO if we deeply disagree on any technical matter as long as we can have a polite exchange of ideas. Most of the people in the community have a vested interest in improving the bitcoin ecosystem. I am deeply sorry when I see people offending other people to advance their cause. The block size debate is a sad example of that. Losing giants like Mike Hearn because of those personal attacks is a tragedy and it is totally unfair.

Having said that, let's go to the battle  ...

The way I see it, using this way to transfer (a decent amount of) money has the following benefits:

a) Way less scary I disagree.  I don't find bitcoin addresses scary at all.Ok Danny, you have a "Legendary" badge in this forum. I bet you aren't easily scared by anything bitcoin related. But try the mother of your neighbor
b) Compact (15 decimal digits in the example vs 34 case sensitive alphanumeric positions) See? We can agree on something!  
c) Possible to be dictated and typed easily (only needs the numerical keypad) Bitcoin addresses can also be dictated and typed easily.Ok. I'll give you this point if you concede that writing a shorter address made up of decimal digits and dots is EASIER and faster than writing a longer series of case sensitive alphanumeric characters.This is particularly true if you are using a soft keyboard on a cell phone (Ever tried to type a long random Wifi password?).
d) Secure (mostly but not only, because of the checksum) Bitcoin addresses also have a checksum. Never said they haven't. In fact -the way I am presenting this idea- Base58 addresses have a stronger checksum (32 bits vs -let's say- 20 bits). Point for you   but... If we use the amount transferred to the UTXO anchoring the address as an added verification step -could be optional- then I believe we are very close or even have a significant edge.
e) Familiar; very similar to what regular people use to transfer money
f) Doesn't need any external database or service, it just makes use of the blockchain For most, the blockchain IS an external database.  Bitcoin addresses on the otherhand do NOT need an external database. Ok, but if we were to reject any improvement because it needs access to the bitcoin blockchain then our hands would really be tied. It is hard to think about any meaningful addition to the bitcoin ecosystem that does not rely on querying the blockchain. What I meant in this point is that you don't have to rely on any database other than bitcoin's own.

g) The implementation in a wallet is ridiculously easy Lite (SPV) wallets don't store the entire blockchain.  Bitcoin addresses are MUCH easier to implement in a wallet.Maybe, but those are already implemented. I only mean they are easy to implement. SPV clients could use any of the several APIs available (I'd use more than one, to be safer though)
h) Doesn't require major testing, since it doesn't change the bitcoin protocol in any way Anything handling people's wealth should be tested.  Bitcoin addresses are already tested for more than 8 years.Fair enough. But this pointer addresses are ALSO bitcoin addresses. They inherit all of that security because they are really the same. I said any major testing. Of course they need testing, just not the kind of testing you can expect from some big change like SegWit of LN
i) It is completely optional. You can use if you need it and when you need it. Bitcoin addresses are already optional.  Your solution isn't optional if the other party hasn't implemented your solution, or if the other party refuses to accept traditional addresses.I don't see this as an either or situation. If I am requesting you a payment using this pointer addressing scheme, I would send you BOTH the tradicional address in a Base58Check format AND the pointer address. That way, you have an additional way of checking that you are sending funds to the proper destination. So, even if your wallet hasn't implemented the pointer address scheme yet, you can still complete the transaction.
g) You can even use it without a software implementation (Just use the blockchain.info website) I find blockchain.info's website to be VERY unreliable.I don't have the same experience with blockchain.info; I am pretty happy with it myself. However, there are several webs that offer similar services.

It has also the following challenges:

a) Not implemented anywhere. Just an idea (yet)
b) Not valid for every transaction (it doesn't intend to, anyway)
c) It could have some security risks I am not capable of seeing (that's the top reason I posted this, btw)
d) Needs a standard (Anyone would like to help me writing a BIP for it?)
e) Best practice is to NEVER re-use a bitcoin address.  This "solution" is useless for everyone except those that are already choosing to ignore this advice. While I understand and mostly agree with the general concept that reusing addresses is a bad idea, I don't think it is fair to say that it is NEVER a good idea. Both major concerns of address reuse (loss of privacy and smaller security) do not apply in this case, if you use this scheme the way I explained, each address should only be used twice for a payment (three at most if you want to sent a partial transaction first, for added security) , and they can be all spent at once, thus preserving both safety and privacy.

Bitcoin will have to become much more user friendly to achieve the kind of reach we all expect it to.

Just like TCP/IP and UDP and HTTPS and FTP and routers and switches and gateways and firewalls need to be much more user friendly for the internet to achieve the kind of reach we all expect it to?

The solution is to add layers on top of the technology, not to change the underlying technology or expect the average user to understand the underlying technology.  I realize that your suggestion IS a layer on top of the existing technology, it's just a bad layer that discourages best practices. Again, I have to disagree that THIS restricted reuse of addresses is not a best practice. Even if you still disagree with my disagreement  , at least, you'll have to concede that part of the beauty of bitcoin is its permissionless nature. I am not forcing anyone to use this system. I am just proposing an alternative that I believe useful -for certain use cases, not as a general rule-.
As an added bonus, I am going to cite another disadvantage I previously forgot to mention (I'm trying to be honest here, no matter how much I love my own idea...). Using this scheme of payments requires the receiver of the funds to pay an additional fee. I understand this is buying extra security. But again, isn't it nice that you have the freedom to trade easy of use security over cost? The way I see it, if you don't like this addressing scheme, or don't think your transaction deserves an extra fee, by any means, use the Base58 payment.

If we neglect the social aspects of bitcoin, by not improving also its non-technical deficits, it won't succeed as a payment platform.

Then I guess we don't need to change anything, because it is already succeeding as a payment platform.  Given your statement, I guess that must be proof that we've already "improved its non-technical deficits".

I can't possibly agree on that. I don't know your expectations for bitcoin. I expect nothing but total world domination...   I can't possibly know what percentage of the transaction every block contains is used for a payment. Let's say it is 100%. That would mean about 3 transactions per second with full blocks. According to this Visa handles about 2000 per second. There is much to be done in every front before we can proclaim sucess.

Maybe what we have is enough for it to succeed as a settlement network for an investor to be happy, but I think we can do much better.

And we will.  But not with this proposal.

Who knows? The beauty of Layer 2 proposals is that they are unstoppable it somebody is willing to implement them and some users want to use them. That permissionless property of bitcoin is a great asset of the ecosystem. Let a hundred flowers blossom...

Again, thank you very much for sharing your wisdom and tone!

Final note: Excuse me for ending the post citing Mao. Probably not the best person to quote from a libertarian like myself, but I like to say that you can learn something even from the most obnoxious person you know.

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[JFC]

Opening new levels of discussion to improve bitcoin is a great thing but I kind of like the address format and I'm not that  a tech-savvy type of girl, I just got used to it

Hi Mandy,

it is great that you feel comfortable with the traditional bitcoin address format. But I bet that you are more tech-savvy than you think! (What are you doing in this forum if you are not?) 

Regards

P.S.: Don't worry, I am not planning on deprecating the Base58Check format (not that I could even if I wanted...). I could call it 'legacy' though if I wanted to be pretentious and mean, but I will not 

[BettorChain.com]

Personally, I like the original format, but that's my opinion.
What is the reason why you would like to change the address format for that one?
Is it easier to remember?

[Mandy420]

Opening new levels of discussion to improve bitcoin is a great thing but I kind of like the address format and I'm not that  a tech-savvy type of girl, I just got used to it

Hi Mandy,

it is great that you feel comfortable with the traditional bitcoin address format. But I bet that you are more tech-savvy than you think! (What are you doing in this forum if you are not?) 

Regards

P.S.: Don't worry, I am not planning on deprecating the Base58Check format (not that I could even if I wanted...). I could call it 'legacy' though if I wanted to be pretentious and mean, but I will not 

Ty for replying
I don't feel tech savvy at all, I'm here to learn about bitcoin as I feel it's getting serious. Regarding the address format I find it easy to proof check addresses when I want to send or receive only by checking the first and last 2 digits of the address, I bet you can't do that with your format since the numbers are variable and not fixed from what I understood

[tertius993]

Opening new levels of discussion to improve bitcoin is a great thing but I kind of like the address format and I'm not that  a tech-savvy type of girl, I just got used to it

Hi Mandy,

it is great that you feel comfortable with the traditional bitcoin address format. But I bet that you are more tech-savvy than you think! (What are you doing in this forum if you are not?) 

Regards

P.S.: Don't worry, I am not planning on deprecating the Base58Check format (not that I could even if I wanted...). I could call it 'legacy' though if I wanted to be pretentious and mean, but I will not 

Ty for replying
I don't feel tech savvy at all, I'm here to learn about bitcoin as I feel it's getting serious. Regarding the address format I find it easy to proof check addresses when I want to send or receive only by checking the first and last 2 digits of the address, I bet you can't do that with your format since the numbers are variable and not fixed from what I understood

But that method is far from certain - *many* addresses could have the first and last two characters the same.

Personally, I think the OP is definitely thinking on the right lines. Whether this particular proposal is appropriate matters less than the fact that people are thinking about these issues. I think any rational observer would agree that the usability and user-friendliness of the Bitcoin eco-system in general is woeful and anything that improves it will be welcome.

[underhood]

In Europe we have IBAN numbers for EUR account and it is not rememberable at all by avg. person same as bitcoin address you just copy paste it and check visually it is the same (to check for clipboard modifying viruses. Replacing long bitcoin address with shorter one which is still non memorable is useless.

If you want to make something like paypal with sending to email you should think about blockchain solution in which you could voluntarily publish email address xzy@xyz.com belongs to bitcoin address ABC. Sort of named bitcoin address.

[Mandy420]

Opening new levels of discussion to improve bitcoin is a great thing but I kind of like the address format and I'm not that  a tech-savvy type of girl, I just got used to it

Hi Mandy,

it is great that you feel comfortable with the traditional bitcoin address format. But I bet that you are more tech-savvy than you think! (What are you doing in this forum if you are not?) 

Regards

P.S.: Don't worry, I am not planning on deprecating the Base58Check format (not that I could even if I wanted...). I could call it 'legacy' though if I wanted to be pretentious and mean, but I will not 

Ty for replying
I don't feel tech savvy at all, I'm here to learn about bitcoin as I feel it's getting serious. Regarding the address format I find it easy to proof check addresses when I want to send or receive only by checking the first and last 2 digits of the address, I bet you can't do that with your format since the numbers are variable and not fixed from what I understood

But that method is far from certain - *many* addresses could have the first and last two characters the same.

Personally, I think the OP is definitely thinking on the right lines. Whether this particular proposal is appropriate matters less than the fact that people are thinking about these issues. I think any rational observer would agree that the usability and user-friendliness of the Bitcoin eco-system in general is woeful and anything that improves it will be welcome.

I couldn't agree more with you, more people thinking about how to improve bitcoin is excellent news
Just expressed my opinion, Op keep it up

[pereira4]

In the future we will hopefully have confidential transactions as proposed by gmaxwell and then it will not be possible to know what amount of BTC is being moved around, also we will have coinjoin and other privacy stuff. Wouldn't this make your format incompatible with those transactions? or you can still get the information needed?

Also I think in the future we will have some sort of "email" format where you can give to people and when they send you coins it automatically receives them in newly generated addresses for better privacy easily instead of the complex long addresses. I think Bitcoin should have this "email of money" instead of trying to look like an annoying bank account (I hate when I have to share bank account details because the numbers are so long and one mistake and you are fucked)

[JFC]

In the future we will hopefully have confidential transactions as proposed by gmaxwell and then it will not be possible to know what amount of BTC is being moved around, also we will have coinjoin and other privacy stuff. Wouldn't this make your format incompatible with those transactions? or you can still get the information needed?

Confidential transactions are a feature of sidechains not of Bitcoin. The Bitcoin protocol will probably not change in any significant way ever, just as the UDP protocol on which the internet is based on is essentially frozen. You can build layers on top of it (TCP/IP, http, ...) but the basics of routing packets in a best effort manner haven't changed and won't change. So, this addressing scheme should be safe from the kind of changes we can expect. On the other hand, mixing services such as coinjoin are no problem. They are just a way to make transaction linking harder, but the bitcoins end up in traditional addresses.

Also I think in the future we will have some sort of "email" format where you can give to people and when they send you coins it automatically receives them in newly generated addresses for better privacy easily instead of the complex long addresses. I think Bitcoin should have this "email of money" instead of trying to look like an annoying bank account (I hate when I have to share bank account details because the numbers are so long and one mistake and you are fucked)

I also said in my original post that paypal has a very user friendly kind of payment address. However, I don't see how you could easily integrate that kind of payment in the Bitcoin protocol. They are also not very safe. A single typing mistake and you are sending your gazillions to the wrong place. I think some sort of checksum needs to be an integral part of any address scheme, even at the cost of some loss of user friendliness.

[JFC]

Opening new levels of discussion to improve bitcoin is a great thing but I kind of like the address format and I'm not that  a tech-savvy type of girl, I just got used to it

Hi Mandy,

it is great that you feel comfortable with the traditional bitcoin address format. But I bet that you are more tech-savvy than you think! (What are you doing in this forum if you are not?) 

Regards

P.S.: Don't worry, I am not planning on deprecating the Base58Check format (not that I could even if I wanted...). I could call it 'legacy' though if I wanted to be pretentious and mean, but I will not 

Ty for replying
I don't feel tech savvy at all, I'm here to learn about bitcoin as I feel it's getting serious. Regarding the address format I find it easy to proof check addresses when I want to send or receive only by checking the first and last 2 digits of the address, I bet you can't do that with your format since the numbers are variable and not fixed from what I understood

But that method is far from certain - *many* addresses could have the first and last two characters the same.

Personally, I think the OP is definitely thinking on the right lines. Whether this particular proposal is appropriate matters less than the fact that people are thinking about these issues. I think any rational observer would agree that the usability and user-friendliness of the Bitcoin eco-system in general is woeful and anything that improves it will be welcome.

I couldn't agree more with you, more people thinking about how to improve bitcoin is excellent news
Just expressed my opinion, Op keep it up

Mandy, thanks for your nice comments. I'll try to keep it up 
On the other hand tertius993 is right. Just checking 4 digits of the Base58address is better than nothing, but very insecure nonetheless. It is very easy to generate another address with the same 2 starting and ending digits (For comparison a vanity address with 4 characters is free in this service.)

I find it easy to proof check addresses when I want to send or receive only by checking the first and last 2 digits of the address, I bet you can't do that with your format since the numbers are variable and not fixed from what I understood

Aside from being a poor checking, the answer is yes, you could that if you wanted. Once you have 'published' your address on the blockchain, those numbers are fixed forever (as long as your transaction isn't removed from the blockchain; that is the reason you should wait for a fair number of confirmations).

[JFC]

In Europe we have IBAN numbers for EUR account and it is not rememberable at all by avg. person same as bitcoin address you just copy paste it and check visually it is the same (to check for clipboard modifying viruses. Replacing long bitcoin address with shorter one which is still non memorable is useless.

If you want to make something like paypal with sending to email you should think about blockchain solution in which you could voluntarily publish email address xzy@xyz.com belongs to bitcoin address ABC. Sort of named bitcoin address.

underhood, thanks for your comments.

Bank accounts are not rememberable. And yet they are used by millions of persons every day. They are still IMHO much more user friendly than a long series of case-sensitive characters. The purpose here is not creating a payment address you can remember but having something that a general population can use without fear.

Regarding the email-as-an-address it is an interesting idea. I think something could be done by using the OP_RETURN scripting operation. But you would need more than a single payment destination to avoid privacy and security problems. Also, some sort of checksum is also a necessity. But I definitely concur that something along those lines is worth studying.

[JFC]

Personally, I think the OP is definitely thinking on the right lines. Whether this particular proposal is appropriate matters less than the fact that people are thinking about these issues. I think any rational observer would agree that the usability and user-friendliness of the Bitcoin eco-system in general is woeful and anything that improves it will be welcome.

Hi tertius993,

thank you for your comments. I totally agree with that.
The particular format I am proposing is not the important thing here. Improving the usability and user-friendliness of Bitcoin is.

It is nice to know there are other people in this forum that recognize this problem and will welcome improvements in these areas.