Armory Crowdfunding Finished! [UPDATE - *BETA*]

[kevinejohn]

Just sent my donation.

Looking forward to the coming development! Great job so far

[Matthew N. Wright]

Alan, let me tone down the pretentious dick breath and try this again..

As a hero in the making, have you ever explored honest and honorable means to monetize other than just donations?

[Indemnified]

Alan, let me tone down the pretentious dick breath and try this again..

As a hero in the making, have you ever explored honest and honorable means to monetize other than just donations?

You still come across as pretentious to me. I have sent you pre-production payment for your magazine and you asking for that is no more (or less) "honest and honorable" than what Alan is doing - well, yours is maybe a little less honorable

Alan does not seem to be misleading in any way. Please leave him alone and just don't contribute if you don't appreciate what he is doing. I, for one, am glad that he is keeping it all open source.

[V4Vendettas]

Sent a little .. all counts hey 
Keep at it bud

[Matthew N. Wright]

Alan, let me tone down the pretentious dick breath and try this again..

As a hero in the making, have you ever explored honest and honorable means to monetize other than just donations?

You still come across as pretentious to me. I have sent you pre-production payment for your magazine and you asking for that is no more (or less) "honest and honorable" than what Alan is doing - well, yours is maybe a little less honorable

Alan does not seem to be misleading in any way. Please leave him alone and just don't contribute if you don't appreciate what he is doing. I, for one, am glad that he is keeping it all open source.

Receiving fees for a tangeable item is not honorable? Lawl.

Anyway, I love Armory and hope it completely replaces all uses of the normal client and I love anything that plans on incorporating OT. Where my attitude comes from is not related to this project or OP at all-- it's that I am bias against e-begging. Call it one-dimensional (as my pro-crowdfunding marketing director Mihai Alisoe calls it) but I really think he can be making much more and bringing in more resources through other monetary means than crowdfunding alone. If he's already researching other ways, then I'll gladly find a way to remove my foot from my mouth.

@OP: I really want to do something for you with the magazine  that can help you, but I haven't had time to think up something awesome and mutually beneficial. Any ideas guys?

P.S. I know its hard to tell with me sometimes but calling him a hero wasn't sarcasm. I love this project more than I can describe in words, I am just a HUGE hater of crowdfunding for software-only initiatives. Crowdsourcing on the other hand...

[LightRider]

I am just a HUGE hater of crowdfunding

It's easy to hate what you don't understand. The business mentality doesn't understand sharing, helping others, donations, generosity, kindness or being socially responsible.

[genjix]

I am just a HUGE hater of crowdfunding

It's easy to hate what you don't understand. The business mentality doesn't understand sharing, helping others, donations, generosity, kindness or being socially responsible.

Yeah, the logic of the two marketplaces is completely different.

In the commercial marketplace, you would not work for free. Nobody would work at Walmart helping customers or stack shelves for free. You'd be a chump! The logic is that you do stuff for money.

Yet you get all these people on Wikipedia. Volunteers. Who do sometimes insanely tedious work. Why? No one knows. But that's the norms of the community marketplace. The logic of this space, is that of the community. A love of what you do.

Welcome to the new age of peer production.

[Matthew N. Wright]

I am just a HUGE hater of crowdfunding

It's easy to hate what you don't understand. The business mentality doesn't understand sharing, helping others, donations, generosity, kindness or being socially responsible.

I totally agree most of my hatred for it is out of lack of understanding. I see the good that comes from it, but I count the good as "dumb luck". Business is about making money regardless of what happens. I don't rely on donations to publish the magazine for example, I do so based on a very calculated effort of costs, fees, public interest, and I constantly move for more adoption and interest wherever possible. This might not apply to a software application like Armory, but it actually might too. I won't pretend to know, but I will ask the question-- anything other than crowdfunding on the menu?

EDIT: It's not going to happen, but what if MtGox paid him $100 a day to have MtGox trading options embedded (optional of course) into the client. For people who don't use MtGox, it would help them to learn about MtGox (good for MtGox), for those who do use MtGox it would simplify their process of buying bitcoins etc, and for those who are not too fond of MtGox *cough*me*cough* it would be easily ignored as it's just a feature. This is a highly exaggerated example for so early in the game, but it's not an impossible one.

[genjix]

O shut up. Let us geek out over this cool little funding drive. He's doing alright so far. More than 1k in 2 days is far from fail. If he can raise funds without selling himself out or sacrificing quality, why then that's awesome.

[rjk]

When I first heard about this on IRC, it sounded cool and full of fail at the same time. At that point, EVERYTHING including the blockchain was stored in RAM. This made the app incredibly fast, but it also needed like 4 GB of RAM. I am assuming this minor kink has been worked out by now?

I like that it doesn't use the stock bitcoind as a backend like so many other applications, and that it supports multiple wallets and so on and so forth. It seems to have the most features of any other single client.

[etotheipi]

When I first heard about this on IRC, it sounded cool and full of fail at the same time. At that point, EVERYTHING including the blockchain was stored in RAM. This made the app incredibly fast, but it also needed like 4 GB of RAM. I am assuming this minor kink has been worked out by now?

I like that it doesn't use the stock bitcoind as a backend like so many other applications, and that it supports multiple wallets and so on and so forth. It seems to have the most features of any other single client.

rjk,

Unfortunately, it hasn't reached that stage yet.  It still requires the blockchain in memory, though I have made a lot of progress switching to a non-full-RAM implementation.  It was an early design decision due to it being a creative, experimental tool, not a wide-user-base client.  I'm paying for that now, by having to overhaul pieces of the C++ code run like a "normal" application.   Unfortunately, it's a lot of work, and will need a lot of testing when it's done.

And, Armory still requires the Satoshi (regular) Bitcoin client to be running -- Armory connects to it as a single peer and uses it to receive not-in-the-blockchain transactions yet, and to send tx to be broadcast.  This gives Armory the security of having all the most advanced networking security behaviors in the regular client, as well as full-validation behaviors, but does make Armory even more burdensome to use.

THIS is why Armory is still alpha.  It's very usable if you have 4GB of RAM and don't mind running the regular client, too.  But it's going to take quite a bit of work just to support everyone else. 

[etotheipi]

I totally agree most of my hatred for it is out of lack of understanding. I see the good that comes from it, but I count the good as "dumb luck". Business is about making money regardless of what happens. I don't rely on donations to publish the magazine for example, I do so based on a very calculated effort of costs, fees, public interest, and I constantly move for more adoption and interest wherever possible. This might not apply to a software application like Armory, but it actually might too. I won't pretend to know, but I will ask the question-- anything other than crowdfunding on the menu?

Matt,

I think the misunderstanding comes from a perception that somehow Armory is "Done."  I will make all kinds of plugins and extras for it, Android apps, whatever, but only when it's actually done.  That includes:

• Getting it to run on systems with less than 4GB of RAM
• Running it without the Satoshi client in the background
• Being able to make Windows, Linux and OSX binaries, installable like an actual program
• Complete multi-signature interface with everything I've already listed (multi-sig, two-factor-auth, buyer-seller-escrow)
• JSON-RPC interface
• etc

There's a good reason it is "alpha," and many more months of work to get it to a final release with everything I think it should have.  Perhaps, at that time, I will contact you for advice/help on how to monetize future efforts.  But until then, I don't want corrupt it with ads, obligate myself to some big core donors, or stifle momentum to work on business-specific add-ons, just because I could use a few bucks now.  I want it to have everything imaginable, and also be free.  That sounds like a good crowdfunding platform

[neuronics]

Great job so far !  Just sent my donation and good luck.

[rjk]

And, Armory still requires the Satoshi (regular) Bitcoin client to be running -- Armory connects to it as a single peer and uses it to receive not-in-the-blockchain transactions yet, and to send tx to be broadcast.  This gives Armory the security of having all the most advanced networking security behaviors in the regular client, as well as full-validation behaviors, but does make Armory even more burdensome to use.

Whoopsie, OK, I haven't been on IRC for a while so I haven't kept up. However, this might be good to remotely manage a different bitcoind, no? I have a server with the bitcoind on it running as a service, and having a remote GUI would be cool.

[Matthew N. Wright]

I totally agree most of my hatred for it is out of lack of understanding. I see the good that comes from it, but I count the good as "dumb luck". Business is about making money regardless of what happens. I don't rely on donations to publish the magazine for example, I do so based on a very calculated effort of costs, fees, public interest, and I constantly move for more adoption and interest wherever possible. This might not apply to a software application like Armory, but it actually might too. I won't pretend to know, but I will ask the question-- anything other than crowdfunding on the menu?

Matt,

I think the misunderstanding comes from a perception that somehow Armory is "Done."  I will make all kinds of plugins and extras for it, Android apps, whatever, but only when it's actually done.  That includes:

• Getting it to run on systems with less than 4GB of RAM
• Running it without the Satoshi client in the background
• Being able to make Windows, Linux and OSX binaries, installable like an actual program
• Complete multi-signature interface with everything I've already listed (multi-sig, two-factor-auth, buyer-seller-escrow)
• JSON-RPC interface
• etc

There's a good reason it is "alpha," and many more months of work to get it to a final release with everything I think it should have.  Perhaps, at that time, I will contact you for advice/help on how to monetize future efforts.  But until then, I don't want corrupt it with ads, obligate myself to some big core donors, or stifle momentum to work on business-specific add-ons, just because I could use a few bucks now.  I want it to have everything imaginable, and also be free.  That sounds like a good crowdfunding platform

Understood and the best of luck to you man. We're all routing for you!

[cypherdoc]

When I first heard about this on IRC, it sounded cool and full of fail at the same time. At that point, EVERYTHING including the blockchain was stored in RAM. This made the app incredibly fast, but it also needed like 4 GB of RAM. I am assuming this minor kink has been worked out by now?

I like that it doesn't use the stock bitcoind as a backend like so many other applications, and that it supports multiple wallets and so on and so forth. It seems to have the most features of any other single client.

rjk,

Unfortunately, it hasn't reached that stage yet.  It still requires the blockchain in memory, though I have made a lot of progress switching to a non-full-RAM implementation.  It was an early design decision due to it being a creative, experimental tool, not a wide-user-base client.  I'm paying for that now, by having to overhaul pieces of the C++ code run like a "normal" application.   Unfortunately, it's a lot of work, and will need a lot of testing when it's done.

And, Armory still requires the Satoshi (regular) Bitcoin client to be running -- Armory connects to it as a single peer and uses it to receive not-in-the-blockchain transactions yet, and to send tx to be broadcast.  This gives Armory the security of having all the most advanced networking security behaviors in the regular client, as well as full-validation behaviors, but does make Armory even more burdensome to use.

THIS is why Armory is still alpha.  It's very usable if you have 4GB of RAM and don't mind running the regular client, too.  But it's going to take quite a bit of work just to support everyone else. 

its really not a problem.  the speed factor overwhelms the need to have the Satoshi client open and the 4GB should be no problem for most modern computers.  i happened to have 8GB in mine and its over a year old.

[etotheipi]

its really not a problem.  the speed factor overwhelms the need to have the Satoshi client open and the 4GB should be no problem for most modern computers.  i happened to have 8GB in mine and its over a year old.

I agree with you 20%.  The first issue is that I want Armory to be to a "global" application.  Right now it's feeding the niche crowd of users willing to set everything up and who have the computing resources to use it.  In other words:  Geeks.  But if this is going to make impact for the greater community, it needs to be usable by anyone.  It's a lot of work, but it would easily improve exposure of Armory 10-fold. 

Second of all, it may be runnable with 4GB of RAM right now, but it won't be in a year.  The blockchain size is increasing in size much faster than modern computers are increasing in available RAM.  There is no way around it:  the current paradigm is unsustainable.  In fact, the blockchain has almost doubled in size since I started this project 8 months ago... and that's when I made the decision to just hold everything in memory.  I didn't anticipate it to get out of hand so quickly...

[giantdragon]

Excellent project! I want to give you free ads on my website Dailybitcoins.org

[etotheipi]

Awww, c'mon!  1,800 page views, but less than 18 donations so far (1%).  Nothing in the last 24 hours.  If it wasn't for the awesomeness of a few key donors, I'd be really disappointed right now  

If even 10% of you donated between $25 and $50, I would pretty much a full-time Armory developer!   And I would get some nice bulk discounts on USB keys and Tshirts (that helps even more!)


If anyone would like to suggest better ways to find people willing to contribute, I'm open!   It's probably not a matter of "spin", but RocketHub did suggest the following interpretation:   Do not think of these as donations.  Consider it a marketplace to buy the overpriced rewards I have posted, knowing that the extra money is going to a good cause!  Even I feel better promoting it when I think of it that way (I guess that's what fundraisers are, aren't they?)

Excellent project! I want to give you free ads on my website Dailybitcoins.org

Giantdragon, maybe I'll take you up on your free advertising!  Thanks for the offer, I'll contact you soon.

P.S. - I added a screenshot of Armory to the top post, I hope that will get people's attention better.

[FreeMoney]

I'll be donating (again), just deciding how much. Keep up the good work!