Armory Crowdfunding Finished! [UPDATE - *BETA*]

[etotheipi]

I've pledged a 5 BTC bounty for someone to write an open source script for making large wagers on Bitlotto (atm the bets are for 0.25 BTC each so to wage 10 BTC takes 40 tx which is a pain to do manually), if a wallet service enables a 'repeat transaction n times feature ie same amount, from same address (or different ones if that's more practical) to be sent to just 1 receiving address (that month's Bitlotto address) then I would award the bounty to who ever made this first

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34007.msg803814#msg803814

So, one transaction:  one input of 10 BTC from 1 address,  and 40 outputs, each 0.25 BTC each to the exact same address?  That can be done manually in Armory, as you can just add 39 recipients and manually copy&paste the data between the fields.  It will put everything into the same transaction.   Clearly it's not preferable, but it's better than creating 40 different transactions.

I am working on an example script for other reasons, that will also serve your purpose, too:

Input:
  Wallet file
  List of addresses in that wallet (or just one addr)
  List of (recip, amt) pairs
Output:
  Signed Transaction

It will search the blockchain, construct the transaction, calculate the fee, add the appropriate change output and sign it.  It could send it too, if you want (I can add a confirmation message, along with a password prompt in case the wallet is encrypted).

I'll let you know when it's done -- it's part of my effort get developers a jumpstart on leveraging armoryengine since there is no JSON interface yet, and sounds like it would get me 5 BTC from you

Just be aware that the more outputs you use, the more the tx will cost.  Each input is about 150 bytes, and each output is about 35 bytes.  Above 3-4 kB, a tx can no longer be free.

[1714913032]

1714913032

[1714913032]

1714913032

[1714913032]

1714913032

[1714913032]

1714913032

[Otoh]

many thanks, each of say the 40 tx needs to be sent as a distinct tx on the blockchain because the tx is the lotto ticket, well it's hash is, so all need to be different & not bundled even though they're all going to the same address, so looking for a way to do this with a wallet that wasn't just manually entering 40 different tx, you'll get better feedback on this once the Bitlotto peeps have replied


edit: each tx is for 0.25 BTC with 0.0005 added as miners fee

edit 2: & it would be nice if it was easy to repeat each month to that month's lotto receiving address once that had been manually entered in to the wallet as recipient for another 40 times 0.25 BTC tx

[etotheipi]

Has no one tried the new wallet migration tool (0.60-alpha-RC1)!?!  I know there has been a low SNR on this thread sometimes, but there was a lot of people requesting it!  Even if no one wants it right now ... I have no idea if the interface makes sense, whether it works on all systems, whether there's any problems with decrypting wallets associated with certain versions of the Satoshi client, etc.    Please help test it so that I can release it as a final version!

many thanks, each of say the 40 tx needs to be sent as a distinct tx on the blockchain because the tx is the lotto ticket, well it's hash is, so all need to be different & not bundled even though they're all going to the same address, so looking for a way to do this with a wallet that wasn't just manually entering 40 different tx, you'll get better feedback on this once the Bitlotto peeps have replied

edit: each tx is for 0.25 BTC with 0.0005 added as miners fee

edit 2: & it would be nice if it was easy to repeat each month to that month's lotto receiving address once that had been manually entered in to the wallet as recipient for another 40 times 0.25 BTC tx

I don't really want to enable folks to send hundreds of tiny transactions.  That bloats the blockchain for everyone else.   For instance... if you send 40 transactions like this, it's likely to add 10 kB to the blockchain, but if you send using multiple outputs, it will take about 1.5 kB...

It sounds like the BitLotto guys have decided that each transaction is one ticket.  It should be pretty easy to change it to each transaction output is/can be a ticket.  So instead of having a pool of tickets like:

Code:

TransactionA
TransactionB
TransactionC
TransactionD

They might have the following:

Code:

TransactionA:0
TransactionB:0
TransactionB:1
TransactionB:3

[bitlotto]

Ya, don't worry about the BitLotto request. We've since changed how it operates so it's not needed anymore. You can now make any size payment you want.

BTW, I really like your program!! Keep up the good work. My machine is a little on the low end for the requirements but I'm watching your progress closely. Thanks!

[Indemnified]

Two hours left.......

[etotheipi]

Got one hour left!  One final push for some funds!!!  I anticipate that even though I didn't make $12k, I will be able to take a substantial amount of time off to work for Armory!  And I'm really looking forward to it!

I will maintain a donation address (and there's a donate button in Armory) for after crowdfunding is over, but RocketHub was my way to collect donations from credit cards too.  I may keep some kind of rewards thing for people who continue to donate in BTC, as I feel like it's a really good idea to make donors feel like their money isn't just hitting a black hole.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Just to be absolutely clear. It's free, right?

[etotheipi]

Just to be absolutely clear. It's free, right?

Armory is free, open-source software.  My only monetization plans are to charge a few dollars for the Android app for two-factor authentication, because I'm getting external help with it, and that's not free.  All other aspects of Armory are completely free, up to an including everything mentioned on the RocketHub page (which is everything including all multi-sig capability, offline wallets, multi-OS support, etc).  

I've already added an elliptic curve calculator, Bitcoin-address message-signing interface and Satoshi wallet migration tool, since starting this push one month ago!  (and there was even a one-week vacation with the g/f in there, too!)

[stick_theman]

Good work so far!

[cypherdoc]

its really too bad more ppl don't step up and donate.  for all the things we're getting as a community we need you to spend more time developing this product.  given how much you've already added just this last month i could only imagine how much better the product would be if you were working on it full time.

[etotheipi]

its really too bad more ppl don't step up and donate.  for all the things we're getting as a community we need you to spend more time developing this product.  given how much you've already added just this last month i could only imagine how much better the product would be if you were working on it full time.

It looks like it's just about over.  Obviously, I would've liked to see more donations (mainly because I really love this project and would love to work on it full-time if I could!).  But it was far from a failure.  There's quite a bit I can do with the money that was raised, and I'm already plenty psyched about taking some time off to get lost in coding for 10 hour chunks of time (while my g/f is at work ).  Speaking of work, I'm at my real job, right now, but I'll post a more-detailed description of thoughts and plans tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks so much to all those who donated!  Seriously, even if I didn't make the goal, I got so much extraordinarily positive feedback, and so many people donating large sums that I really feel like my work is appreciated and will continue to make an impact!

-Alan

[muyuu]

its really too bad more ppl don't step up and donate.  for all the things we're getting as a community we need you to spend more time developing this product.  given how much you've already added just this last month i could only imagine how much better the product would be if you were working on it full time.

It looks like it's just about over.  Obviously, I would've liked to see more donations (mainly because I really love this project and would love to work on it full-time if I could!).  But it was far from a failure.  There's quite a bit I can do with the money that was raised, and I'm already plenty psyched about taking some time off to get lost in coding for 10 hour chunks of time (while my g/f is at work ).  Speaking of work, I'm at my real job, right now, but I'll post a more-detailed description of thoughts and plans tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks so much to all those who donated!  Seriously, even if I didn't make the goal, I got so much extraordinarily positive feedback, and so many people donating large sums that I really feel like my work is appreciated and will continue to make an impact!

-Alan

Can't see why donations cannot carry on, in bitcoins

When I get more free time myself I will try to promote it a bit.

[Rassah]

I've already added an elliptic curve calculator, Bitcoin-address message-signing interface and Satoshi wallet migration tool, since starting this push one month ago!  (and there was even a one-week vacation with the g/f in there, too!)

I can't find the one-week vacation with the g/f feature anywhere in there. I checked all the menus and options, too. Does the "there was" imply this feature was taken out? How much of a bounty is needed to add it back in? 

[etotheipi]

Can't see why donations cannot carry on, in bitcoins

When I get more free time myself I will try to promote it a bit.

Of course!  But for long-term planning purposes, I really needed to gague the level financial support I would get up front, so I know how many hours to reduce at my real job.  The decision I make will stick for at least 9 months, so I have to be sure I'm ready to do it!

I will update the top post with information, shortly.  And I will continue collecting donations through my regular two donation addresses:  

1QBDLYTDFHHZAABYSKGKPWKLSXZWCCJQBX
1ArmoryXcfq7TnCSuZa9fQjRYwJ4bkRKfv


I might even start something very similar on my webpage:  a mini-store of over-priced items that will double as donation/support and also getting something useful.  I'll have to look into the financials of providing shirts & USB keys on-demand, but it might be doable in such a way that I get more benefit than effort spent doing it.  Plus who wouldn't want one of those TShirts!?!   I will send out an email soon asking donors for information, and verify that rewards are requested.  There were a lot of folks who explicitly declined rewards...

I can't find the one-week vacation with the g/f feature anywhere in there. I checked all the menus and options, too. Does the "there was" imply this feature was taken out? How much of a bounty is needed to add it back in?  

LOL.  Nice interpretation.  I'll check with her about adding that as a feature

[rjk]

1QBDLYTDFHHZAABYSKGKPWKLSXZWCCJQBX

Interesting address, is it really all in uppercase?

[etotheipi]

Yessir!  I got a little crazy with vanitygen and succeeded.  It should've taken about 70 days of computation time but I got lucky and found it in about a week...  (notice no digits either, only uppercase letters).

Unfortunately, it's so cool that people don't even recognize it as a Bitcoin address  

[Rassah]

Unfortunately, it's so cool that people don't even recognize it as a Bitcoin address  

Bitcoin can even be used to prove that there are limits to vanity?

[marked]

My only monetization plans are to charge a few dollars for the Android app for two-factor authentication, because I'm getting external help with it, and that's not free.

What integration? And what is the charge for?

An Android armory client, that also has 2FA to interact? or

Android app that is just a 2FA client to produce a code that is then entered into an armory client on windows/a.n.other client to unlock wallet/functions?

in the last case just use google authenticator as a separate android app that can be used to 2FA for armory. It can have multiple counters (I have one for bitcoinica for example, another for my SSH logins, armory would just be a scroll down in the list).

Use a standard OTP library compiled into armory, and produce a QR code for the device to set up the seed. It can be time or counter based. These are IETF standards based mechanisms:
HOTP: An HMAC-Based One-Time Password Algorithm
Time-based One-time Password (TOTP) algorithm

As a bonus, you also get iOS and Blackberry authenticators as well. (blackberry doesn't have QR code scan though)

code is at https://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/ so you can clone and customise the UI yourself if you want an armory client - it has already been done several times as I think the Battle.net/StarWars KOTOR clients are basically reskinned authenticators. Or just add to the list of accounts in the standard authenticator, and leave it up to google to keep it updated so you don't have to fix the issues resulting (and there have been a few recently including Force closing when opening the app- it was updated the same day, but was still an issue as it had been updated for several new devices that had recently been launched.)

The only real cost should be that of getting it into the Google Android market, though you can just make the APK available to download from your armory client site. You won't get the auto-update features of the market. (There are a couple of other markets as well such as amazon app market and appbrain)

marked

[etotheipi]

My only monetization plans are to charge a few dollars for the Android app for two-factor authentication, because I'm getting external help with it, and that's not free.

What integration? And what is the charge for?

An Android armory client, that also has 2FA to interact? or

Android app that is just a 2FA client to produce a code that is then entered into an armory client on windows/a.n.other client to unlock wallet/functions?

in the last case just use google authenticator as a separate android app that can be used to 2FA for armory. It can have multiple counters (I have one for bitcoinica for example, another for my SSH logins, armory would just be a scroll down in the list).

Use a standard OTP library compiled into armory, and produce a QR code for the device to set up the seed. It can be time or counter based. These are IETF standards based mechanisms:
HOTP: An HMAC-Based One-Time Password Algorithm
Time-based One-time Password (TOTP) algorithm

As a bonus, you also get iOS and Blackberry authenticators as well. (blackberry doesn't have QR code scan though)

code is at https://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/ so you can clone and customise the UI yourself if you want an armory client - it has already been done several times as I think the Battle.net/StarWars KOTOR clients are basically reskinned authenticators. Or just add to the list of accounts in the standard authenticator, and leave it up to google to keep it updated so you don't have to fix the issues resulting (and there have been a few recently including Force closing when opening the app- it was updated the same day, but was still an issue as it had been updated for several new devices that had recently been launched.)

The only real cost should be that of getting it into the Google Android market, though you can just make the APK available to download from your armory client site. You won't get the auto-update features of the market. (There are a couple of other markets as well such as amazon app market and appbrain)

marked

Marked,

Armory desktop client will always be completely free and open-source.  It will even include capabilities to set up an arbitrary 2-of-2 wallet, which include creating a Full+WatchOnly wallet-pair for Device A, and a WatchOnly+Full wallet-pair for Device B.  And the appropriate tools to manage them if they happen to both be desktops using Armory.

It's the Android app that will be cost money.  There's been a lot of talk about how that could be done, and a lot of talk (like you posted) about being able to use something like Google authenticator.  But that relies on google.  It's a third-party.  Sure it's free, but it's not "The Way."   I made deterministic and watching-only wallets, and BIP 10 for a reason:  to do all this cool stuff that no one else can do!  This Android app is one of those things.

The Android app will hold only a full wallet (B), probably transferred to it via scanning a paper-backup.  The watching-only wallet of (B) will be kept on the user's computer along with the full other wallet (A) to be used in the 2-of-2 transaction.  Whenever the user wants to spend Bitcoins:

(1) Create transcation as usual on desktop, provide signature A
(2) Generate BIP 10 packet of partially signed transaction, display as a QR code (or sequence of QR codes)
(3) Scan QR code(s) with phone, display confirmation dialog
(4) Enter passphrase as confirmation, press "Go".  Signature B is added, converted to final tx, and broadcast.

(The broadcast step will actually be to jump onto the Bitcoin network, seek out 3+ peers, and broadcast to each... it should take only a couple seconds).

The whole process requires no third-party at all.  Only your computer and your Android device.  Besides the broadcast part, you don't even need an internet connection.  Broadcasting will simply be queuing it to be broadcast next time it has a connection.

THAT app is what would not be free, because someone else is doing the bulk of the development on it.  It won't be even be a full Bitcoin app. 
If others want to implement it some other way, they are welcome to do so, and I will do my best to support the use cases other developers request.  But at the moment, this is what my plan is.  Let me know if you are planning to develop your own Android client that has Armory in mind...

[etotheipi]

I've updated the title and top-post with a "wrap-up" section.  Thanks again to everyone, and please contact me if you donated but did not receive an email regarding rewards.