Application to manage users, wallet, and to audit

[jimbobway]

Right now it is very easy for single users to use bitcoin.  It is easy to deploy on a single computer and accept and send payments. For a medium or large business, however, it might be a little risky to allow a single person to control the bitcoin application.

That is why I am proposing maybe we could develop an application around bitcoin that supports multiple users to manage a wallet so there is an ability to audit user transactions.  The wallet must be secure from the users except maybe from a 'superuser'.  The application also needs to have the ability to automatically backup the wallet without exposing the wallet.

One of my other concerns is that it is very hard to accept automated payments from a website.  Every thing has to be manual, for instance, I need to manually generate a payment key if I want someone to pay me.  This is great for bartering but we need to take it to the next level and make it automatic and make sending and receiving payments instant.

Scalability is another issue.   As a website grows the application needs to scale with the number of users.

Anyone up for this?  I might be...

[1715164663]

1715164663

[MemoryDealers]

As a merchant trying to accept bitcoins,  I couldn't agree with your post more!
A few initial things that come to mind for this software would be:

1.  Allow users to generate an unlimited number of keys for receiving,  but those same users can NOT send any money out.

2.  Sending money requires authorization from two or more users.  (No single user can send money)

I would be willing to help test this software in a real world environment if needed.

[mcqueenorama]

I agree that better bitcoin support for merchants is necessary.  I like this idea.  Merchants will want to see it integrated with accounting somehow.  At a minimum small businesses have receipts and can go through them at the end of the day, but since this is all online a much more efficient integration is possible.  We need it for merchants to adopt this.  It ought be easier/faster/cheaper than the other systems to really get good traction.

[singpolyma]

Right now it is very easy for single users to use bitcoin.  It is easy to deploy on a single computer and accept and send payments. For a medium or large business, however, it might be a little risky to allow a single person to control the bitcoin application.

That is why I am proposing maybe we could develop an application around bitcoin that supports multiple users to manage a wallet so there is an ability to audit user transactions.  The wallet must be secure from the users except maybe from a 'superuser'.  The application also needs to have the ability to automatically backup the wallet without exposing the wallet.

One of my other concerns is that it is very hard to accept automated payments from a website.  Every thing has to be manual, for instance, I need to manually generate a payment key if I want someone to pay me.  This is great for bartering but we need to take it to the next level and make it automatic and make sending and receiving payments instant.

Something like mybitcoin.com?  Or a client-side application of some kind...?

[Timo Y]

Bitcoin has the ability to support non-standard transactions; this has so far been disabled in the official client.

You could for example design a non-standard transaction that must be signed by two people before it makes it into a block.

Then all you have to do is give two trustworthy people in your business a private key each and make sure they keep that key safe.

Using the block chain directly is a much safer option IMO than building another layer of security software on top of Bitcoin.  The more complexity, the more potential security holes.  

[titeuf_87]

Bitcoin has the ability to support non-standard transactions; this has so far been disabled in the official client.

You could for example design a non-standard transaction that must be signed by two people before it makes it into a block.

Then all you have to do is give two trustworthy people in your business a private key each and make sure they keep that key safe.

Using the block chain directly is a much safer option IMO than building another layer of security software on top of Bitcoin.  The more complexity, the more potential security holes.  

This won't completely solve MemoryDealer's first problem as far as I can see it: the user sends a transaction to a Bitcoin address owned by the company. This is a standard transaction, anyone who manages the wallet can use those bitcoins and send them somewhere.

If you want to use a non-standard transaction to force two people providing their private key, you'd have to resend those bitcoins as soon as you get them (or maybe wait till they got confirmed a bit, to lower fees) to an address owned by you, but with a custom scriptPubKey on the TxOut that checks for two keys instead of the usual one.

Back on the topic:
To solve this, I would make bitcoin run on one computer and keep it locked away: no users are allowed to touch it. Around this I would make a layer that can interact with bitcoin that provides everything the user needs and can log everything happening, like OP suggest.

I don't think scalability will be too much of an issue: this is just a small interface around bitcoin and so shouldn't be too resource intensive.

--
Titeuf

[nereer]

I would be interested in helping where I can.

Perhaps the first stage is to put a wiki up and start sketching out what features this would have (?)

I see this being most useful to me as a merchant tool that hooks into an accounting system to autogenerate accounts.