Couple questions about the program (not the protocol)

[jeffayle]

I've read a bunch of stuff I could find on the wiki, but I still have a few questions:

What exactly are accounts? From what I can tell, the label you give a receiving address is actually the account it belongs to, and each account has its own balance which can be moved around between accounts, right? Now, is this just to keep track of different balances?

How can I see what address a transaction came from? My client says unknown, but when I look on block explorer, it tells me where it came from, so it's obvious that this should be available to anyone.

Is it possible to put anything in the from field? It gets blanked out as soon as soon as I enter an address. This seems like it would be a useful field if you were sending money to a person (as opposed to a business).

What is the difference between the all transactions tab and the sent/received tab?

Thank you!

[1715322618]

1715322618

[1715322618]

1715322618

[theymos]

Accounts are mostly for merchants to manage users more easily. For standard users, they function just like labels.

"From" isn't shown in the UI because it's not reliable. The "from" address could belong to some random MyBitcoin user. (I think it should be shown when you double-click the transaction, along with a warning about never sending money to the address.)

The "from" field works with IP address transfers only, since there is no support for sending messages over the normal network. It works with IP transfers because you send the info directly.

"All transactions" shows generations.

[jeffayle]

So for merchants, would they generally keep an account for each person they deal with?

Thank you, I sent 1BTC to the address in your signature

[theymos]

So for merchants, would they generally keep an account for each person they deal with?

Yes. Then you can transfer coins between users with "move", and Bitcoin can automatically generate new addresses for users when the last one was used.

This is how most Bitcoin sites should work: When a user registers, you create a new account for them. Get the address they should pay to with getaccountaddress. Poll getreceivedbyaccount to see when they've paid. Notify them at 0 confirmations, and record the balance in your database at 6 confirmations (or less, depending on the size of the purchase).

Thank you, I sent 1BTC to the address in your signature

Thanks! 

[jeffayle]

Okay, that makes sense. Thanks again.