[ANNOUNCE] Bitcoin message service v1.0 (within block-chain)

[finway]

I've send the email and
pay exactly 0.16969016 BTC to 1QCfYmFzWCDkQpGBDLvQQTLxk2gKRy3Uyq

Where will this done?

[finway]

I just found 90% of my BTCs are sent to 1BTCmsgZo1ef9nkx1eQMy5DsiaNfRQMVuR

Nice job , but can you make it cheaper ?

[finway]

What a wonderful app.

May be it should be moved to Bitcoin Discussion.

[cronopio]

Great Job!

Really impressed.

[btcmsg]

I've send the email and
pay exactly 0.16969016 BTC to 1QCfYmFzWCDkQpGBDLvQQTLxk2gKRy3Uyq

Where will this done?

Sorry for answering late. I was offline.
The system has received your payment at Block 149878 (2011-10-19 11:34:30)
After 3 confirmations, the processing was done, and the message appeared in Block 149882 (2011-10-19 12:12:00)
In total, there were 4 blocks in between the request and the process (37.5 minutes).
The message is available in the transaction:
http://blockexplorer.com/rawtx/b35c9a4554b87ed6138ceadc9d830e1056552fbb458c55447e8fcbd0ed83a3d0
and in order to see it, just copy all its content, and paste in http://btcmsg.staticloud.com/#Browse

You could also search in blockexplorer the address that you have sent the payment to, and see the the first "sent" transaction is your message.

BTCmsg,
at your service.

[btcmsg]

I just found 90% of my BTCs are sent to 1BTCmsgZo1ef9nkx1eQMy5DsiaNfRQMVuR

Nice job , but can you make it cheaper ?

Transaction of very small amount require higher transaction fee by the bitcoin network (this is embedded within the bitcoin client code).
I have set the price to avoid the "too low transaction" punishment, to cover the current transaction fees and to leave a small margin that supposed to cover the running costs of the service.
Currently I am very far from covering the costs, but if there is a reasonable demand I could reduce the fee.
This would require an update to btcmsg html/css/javascript client and setting the new values in the server side (few seconds work ...), but considering the deep dive of the BTC/USD rate took, I don't see the price so high now.

What will happen to messages once a newer client version is published?
The old messages will be always visible by the old clients as well as new clients.
New ascii messages will be always visible by old clients as well as new clients.
Non ascii messages as well as any other new feature may be only available using a newer client.

[btcmsg]

What a wonderful app.

May be it should be moved to Bitcoin Discussion.

I didn't move the thread, but instead I opened a new thread in Bitcoin Discussion:
Services possible only using BTC
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49127.0

[joecooin]

Why can I not use a web-based mail program of my choice?

why not just create a mailto-link that can be copied into any mail-software?

it's a pity I cannot use the service ...

 

[btcmsg]

Why can I not use a web-based mail program of my choice?

why not just create a mailto-link that can be copied into any mail-software?

it's a pity I cannot use the service ...

 

I will add an additional mailto link on the next version...
Until then, you can click the button (which is anyhow implemented as a mailto link), and copy the to/subject/body from the message that opens in your local mail client, and paste it into your webmail.
Take care: Mistakes in the copy/paste may damage the message.

[BTCurious]

Another message is already present on your disk inside the block chain:
Why not checking it now?

You can read it offline using (slightly modified) bitcoin-tools (patch included):

Code:

$ bitcoind stop
$ mkdir -p /tmp/bitcoin-block-snapshot
$ cp ~/.bitcoin/blk* /tmp/bitcoin-block-snapshot
$
$ wget http://btcmsg.staticloud.com/msgdump.tgz
$ tar xfz msgdump.tgz
$ cd btcmsg-tools
$
$ python msgdump.py --datadir=/tmp/bitcoin-block-snapshot --transaction=72e78a410caf245e18ec9ee04d2e478c1e68f5eb8503d34ff69589a07aaa3cd1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth
was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and
the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
And God said, "Let there be light".
$
$

One of the first messages in the blockchain is a religious quote?

Gah -_-

I'm tempted to post the litany of Gendlin to the blockchain. At a later timestamp than the genisis quote, of course, to signify humanity's acceptance of reality and transcendence over primitive concepts.

What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.

(Or perhaps I should the much more straightforward quote by Richard Dawkins: "By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.")

[Mike Hearn]

I think there are some mistaken beliefs in this thread that should be corrected.

Firstly, yes these messages can be deleted. It's not correct that you are forcing Bitcoin users to keep your scribbles around forever. Once a transaction is identified as being a message transaction, it can be erased from local copies of the block chain. That part of the merkle tree is stubbed out. As long as the majority of nodes synchronize their behavior in this regard, new nodes can still bootstrap from the chain because stubbed out transactions cannot be spent, so there is no danger of receiving a transaction you can't verify but which still gets included. The code to do this isn't written but will eventually be just for the scalability benefits.

The usual proposed "solution" to this problem is to encrypt the message so nobody can identify it as being a non-financial transaction. However then you've simply changed the problem from getting your message to somebody  to getting the key+txhash to somebody, which makes the whole exercise pointless - anyone who has the correct key and txhash can read the message, so you may as well just send them the message directly and in the clear. It'd be much more secure to just use conventional email and PGP.

There is another mistakes belief expressed here, which is that most users will have a full block chain copy and that this is how smartphone copies work. That isn't correct. No Android Bitcoin app keeps a full block chain copy today. They use simplified payment verification instead (read Satoshis paper). Eventually the vast majority of users will not have a full block chain copy but only the headers. Full verifying nodes will probably end up being run only by miners, merchants, hobbyists, bitbanks, etc.

Please don't insert arbitrary messages into the block chain. You are not buying immortality, you're just creating blockchain graffiti, and just like real graffiti if it became a larger problem it would eventually get cleaned up.

[finway]

I think there are some mistaken beliefs in this thread that should be corrected.

Firstly, yes these messages can be deleted. It's not correct that you are forcing Bitcoin users to keep your scribbles around forever. Once a transaction is identified as being a message transaction, it can be erased from local copies of the block chain. That part of the merkle tree is stubbed out. As long as the majority of nodes synchronize their behavior in this regard, new nodes can still bootstrap from the chain because stubbed out transactions cannot be spent, so there is no danger of receiving a transaction you can't verify but which still gets included. The code to do this isn't written but will eventually be just for the scalability benefits.

The usual proposed "solution" to this problem is to encrypt the message so nobody can identify it as being a non-financial transaction. However then you've simply changed the problem from getting your message to somebody  to getting the key+txhash to somebody, which makes the whole exercise pointless - anyone who has the correct key and txhash can read the message, so you may as well just send them the message directly and in the clear. It'd be much more secure to just use conventional email and PGP.

There is another mistakes belief expressed here, which is that most users will have a full block chain copy and that this is how smartphone copies work. That isn't correct. No Android Bitcoin app keeps a full block chain copy today. They use simplified payment verification instead (read Satoshis paper). Eventually the vast majority of users will not have a full block chain copy but only the headers. Full verifying nodes will probably end up being run only by miners, merchants, hobbyists, bitbanks, etc.

Please don't insert arbitrary messages into the block chain. You are not buying immortality, you're just creating blockchain graffiti, and just like real graffiti if it became a larger problem it would eventually get cleaned up.

Can't agree with you, these are just normal transactions with fees, and i think the community have no right to erase these transactions, if we do so, the decentralized "bitcoin" idea will collapse. Scalability is a problem, but it can't be solved in this way.

And  btw, these messages can't be more arbitray than in the genesis block.

[Mike Hearn]

Transactions that don't contain public keys cannot ever be spent so they are safe to delete.

I'm sure at some point theymos will pop up and remind everyone that whilst this program doesn't do it, there are ways to construct transactions with messages inside that can't be deleted unless there's some other way to achieve a global consensus on making the outputs unspendable.

Nevertheless, putting messages in the block chain is a stupid and pointless idea. If you want to broadcast a message so it cannot be deleted take out an advert in a national newspaper. They are archived by libraries around the world and distributed to hundreds of thousands of different people.

[Littleshop]

Historical event!
The first message written using Bitcoin message service (well, except for my own messages), has been processed.

To see it, you should copy everything from:
http://blockexplorer.com/rawtx/afed08f0d9a99b7ee68e58cd8ac42f83d8238cdb0a36cbb0ded6d5498b2dd807
and paste in:
http://btcmsg.staticloud.com/#Browse
... or go the "local" way using your own copy of block-chain, as described in a previous message.

I would just say that it is a known (and relevant) citation from Thomas Jefferson :-)
This citation will stay as part of the bitcoin block-chain forever.

Some technical details about this message:

• Request first appeared in Block 149039 (2011-10-12 15:01:14)
• Request got processed in  Block 149045 (2011-10-12 15:36:03)
• The amount paid by the user for this message is 0.24863442 BTC
• The fee that Bitcoin message service has paid to the bitcoin network for this message is 0.001 BTC

Thank you first user :-)

BTCmsg,
at your service.

Asked before but unanswered as far as I can tell. 

What pool is this done through?

[btcmsg]

Asked before but unanswered as far as I can tell. 

What pool is this done through?

The message is written using a normal transaction. The one who generates the next block and accepts that transaction is the one to place it in the block chain (and the one that gets the fee).
No specific pool is involved, but obviously pools are those who generate most of the blocks nowadays, so with a high probability it is a pool that does the job.

BTCmsg,
At you service.

[btcmsg]

Hello to the user that sent 0.09667787 BTC to the address 1CnB6deXqy8qmAPfdVxAV7xzycnPGGJbgG
Your email message got lost, so please send it again, or send the message to my private email (appears in the client), or PM me.
If you don't respond within 72 hours, a refund will be issued.

BTCmsg,
at your service

[BitcoinMint.US]

This looks like a good service.  Great idea.  It'd be nice if the email step was built in though so everything could be done straight from the site.

[finway]

Hello to the user that sent 0.09667787 BTC to the address 1CnB6deXqy8qmAPfdVxAV7xzycnPGGJbgG
Your email message got lost, so please send it again, or send the message to my private email (appears in the client), or PM me.
If you don't respond within 72 hours, a refund will be issued.

BTCmsg,
at your service

I think the message is sent?

~ Matt & Angela in love always and forever ~ 8/1/2009

[btcmsg]

Hello to the user that sent 0.09667787 BTC to the address 1CnB6deXqy8qmAPfdVxAV7xzycnPGGJbgG
Your email message got lost, so please send it again, or send the message to my private email (appears in the client), or PM me.
If you don't respond within 72 hours, a refund will be issued.

BTCmsg,
at your service

I think the message is sent?

~ Matt & Angela in love always and forever ~ 8/1/2009

No, this is a different message.
I am still waiting for the 0.09667787 BTC message.

[btcmsg]

Hello to the user that sent 0.09667787 BTC to the address 1CnB6deXqy8qmAPfdVxAV7xzycnPGGJbgG
Your email message got lost, so please send it again, or send the message to my private email (appears in the client), or PM me.
If you don't respond within 72 hours, a refund will be issued.

BTCmsg,
at your service

Since no response was seen, a full refund (0.09667787 BTC) was issued:
http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MDahLJFmbyDgjyetq6sENZJHkVS2r1vSi
Dear user: You may try again, just take care to send the email message with no mistakes (especially correct "To" field).

BTCmsg,
at you service.