The best new Bitcoin PROJECT from China! (Tablets and BITCOINS)

[John (John K.)]

Yesterday Yifu Guo (bitsyn.com) and I visited a company that produces Android tablets.
We went with the intention of buying tablets, but when they asked how we wanted to use them,  it all started.

It became an intense meeting of nearly 5 hours. 
Nearly 75% of that time was spent discussing Bitcoins.
The managing director and other members of the meeting were very enthusiastic and seemed to get the big picture.
At one point,  he commented that "Bitcoin is a pandora's box."

The company is very interested in preloading ALL OF THEIR TABLETS with Bitcoin relay node software,  AND a Bitcoin wallet software.
They will then begin marketing their tablets as having this additional "Bitcoin feature" that their competitors don't.
They will market it along the lines that you can buy a tablet and become your own bank,  etc.

This company ships about 150,000 Android devices per month.
That is close to TWO MILLION tablets per year.

I think this is another huge opportunity, and giant step forward for Bitcoin.
I would suspect that with an extra 2M devices that have the Bitcoin relay node software always running in the background,
and that randomly connect to the internet from various IPs as their users use them, the Bitcoin network would become impossible to block.

Can someone with more technical knowledge chime in on the benefits of this many extra nodes?

In order for this to happen,  the Bitcoin community will need to be ready to help with the development of all the required software to do this.

Items required from us:
1) Super reliable Android Bitcion node relay software.
2) Super reliable Android Chinese Bitcoin wallet software.

This is awesome! Which tablet company is it? 

[1714147315]

1714147315

[1714147315]

1714147315

[hxtop]

1) Something with huge ramifications (good or bad)
2) Something dangerous
3) Something that can't be undone

[MemoryDealers]

This is awesome! Which tablet company is it?  

I don't want to step on any toes,  so I will let Yifu check with the company to see if they are ready to have their intentions be publicly known.


Also,  I believe the idea is to install software in each tablet that relays new Bitcoin transactions throughout the network.
It would not store the entire blockchain.  I will need advice from the core developers in regards to what will be the most useful and practical.
If the Bitcoin software degrades the end user experience,  I don't think they will be willing to install it.

[casascius]

Also,  I believe the idea is to install software in each tablet that relays new Bitcoin transactions throughout the network.
It would not store the entire blockchain.  I will need advice from the core developers in regards to what will be the most useful and practical.
If the Bitcoin software degrades the end user experience,  I don't think they will be willing to install it.

I'm not a developer, but I think I have a pretty good understanding under the hood to confidently suggest the following: don't bother having tablets be relays.  These are far better suited to being a client of some other more powerful server.  If there were a common language/API where such client could get services from any one of several providers, that might be way more attractive than having an app that depends on a single service that could go rogue, down, or otherwise change plans anytime.

An app that simply did "relaying" would simply consume the user's resources - in painful showstopper quantities - without adding any useful benefit to the Bitcoin network.

Without the block chain, the app can't validate transactions (so it doesn't know what's OK to relay and what's not), and it can't satisfy requests for historical blocks from peers trying to get their block chain for the first time.  Setting aside the fact that at a minimum, the entire subset of the block chain representing unspent transactions is needed to validate transactions, validating ECDSA signatures (to know whether they're worth relaying) is CPU-intensive enough by itself to matter enormously for a low-power device.

Consider, in comparison, a self-proclaimed "supernode" like Blockchain.info, which boasts "3356 nodes connected" at the bottom of their page.  If this is really a single Bitcoin node that is very well connected, this is the sort of thing that boosts propagation: the moment any transaction hits Blockchain.info, it will be instantly propagated to 3355 other nodes in a single hop.  The more nodes like this we can encourage to exist... this will give the P2P network the boost I think you are hoping for.

As Bitcoin grows and the transaction volume increases, unfortunately the kind of P2P network needed to sustain it will consist of highly-connected highly-powered nodes, rather than lots of low-power low-bandwidth ones.  This is just a simple matter of relatively undisputed fact, stemming from the current design of "all nodes must process all transactions".

[MaxSan]

If the company itself were to host a so called "supernode" and the clients were to always connect to their supernodes and another client I think this would give some nice connectivity.

This is pretty awsome. Pandoras box indeed.

[giszmo]

like

[Andreas Schildbach]

Bitcoin client on Android by Andreas Schildbach is a full client implementation, it should also include relay node functionality.

Bitcoin Wallet for Android does keep all block headers on the device. It dumps all transactions except the ones relevant for the wallet because of space constraints.

This means it cannot relay blocks right now. On devices with several GB of memory I'd like to see that happening in future.

If anyone wants to help coding, BitCoinJ is the framework Bitcoin Wallet builds on and it would accept patches.

[Xenland]

Full node on every mobile device is not necessary and can't tackle the problem of "Great Firewall" blocking Bitcoin transactions. Another idea is setup full Bitcoin nodes in every major city with satellite internet connectivity.

hehe... satalite...

[Andrew Vorobyov]

We must get CyanogenMod and miui to include Bitcoin app by default

[HostFat]

We must get CyanogenMod and miui to include Bitcoin app by default

Yeah, this is a good idea

[weex]

This is an interesting development!

For tablets it's clear that some sort of thin client will be best but so far the thin clients have been tied to individual servers or services. I think a network of utility servers and clients that could connect to them would improve upon this model. The tablet would hold(and backup) private keys and interact with one or more of these servers to get balance updates and relay transactions.

Has anyone started to develop such a server?

[Andreas Schildbach]

For tablets it's clear that some sort of thin client will be best but so far the thin clients have been tied to individual servers or services. I think a network of utility servers and clients that could connect to them would improve upon this model. The tablet would hold(and backup) private keys and interact with one or more of these servers to get balance updates and relay transactions.

Has anyone started to develop such a server?

Before developing a server, a protocol standard needs to be agreed on. Otherwise, everyone will be doing its own protocol.

[Shuai]

I'd like to remind everyone that it's pretty common for Chinese businessmen to make lofty promises like this. It doesn't actually mean anything in 99% of the cases.

Also, it would make sense to preload a tablet with a bitcoin client connected to a node that the company centrally maintains. But it's a terrible idea to have every tablet be relay nodes, not to mention impossible.

[caveden]

This is great!

For Android tablets, the BitcoinJ based application is probably the way to go. It doesn't store the entire blockchain, only what concerns its own wallet. Eventually the protocol could be evolved so that it doesn't even need to download entire blocks, only the chunks which contain the transactions it needs to know about.
Private keys are stored locally, no server needed.

But I guess some security features should be implemented before. Last time I've checked, I couldn't even access the wallet file in my android phone to back it up. Backups and encrypted wallets at least are a must. And even that is still vulnerable to malware, unfortunately. Maybe they should also consider making an agreement with some backup service and ship the table with their app included, like Wuala for example, which encrypts everything locally before sending the files to their servers.

We should probably organize bounties to the development of such needed features.

[Andrew Vorobyov]

Why are you guys keep talking about BitcoinJ and etc... blockchain.info-like wallets are the future..

[Realpra]

... dedicated Bitcoin POS terminals for retail use.

Did you ever see this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7539.120

I know you programmed a POS terminal, but using QR codes.

What do you think of our/my design?
2$ a card.
Tops 100$ a terminal including your android phone in that price.

The card just signs transactions and gives them to the terminal which broadcasts them.
If they are invalid I assume they will just be ignored by the network.


If China starts using bitcoin it is game over. They have a lot of restrictions on moving money I believe so bitcoin really would be like pandoras box there.

[unclescrooge]

ALL OF THEIR TABLETS with Bitcoin relay node software

Are you sure this is a good idea? I don't think a mobile device should run a node that will keep on consuming more ressources over time (cpu, battery, bandwith)

[Andreas Schildbach]

But I guess some security features should be implemented before. Last time I've checked, I couldn't even access the wallet file in my android phone to back it up. Backups and encrypted wallets at least are a must. And even that is still vulnerable to malware, unfortunately. Maybe they should also consider making an agreement with some backup service and ship the table with their app included, like Wuala for example, which encrypts everything locally before sending the files to their servers.

We should probably organize bounties to the development of such needed features.

Encrypted wallets need to be implemented at BitCoinJ level. Note that you would not want to encrypt the whole wallet but just the private keys. Otherweise you'd need to enter your passphrase just to sync the blockchain and receive payments.

(Encrypted) backups I have implemented in a private branch of Bitcoin Wallet for some months now, but it is waiting for BitCoinJ to implement a reliable way to import keys/rewind blockchain, which is needed for restore.

So either way, patches for BitCoinJ are badly needed.

[caveden]

Why are you guys keep talking about BitcoinJ and etc... blockchain.info-like wallets are the future..

BitcoinJ doesn't need a server. For Chinese people in particular, I guess not having all their transaction log stored in a particular place is a must.

[unclescrooge]

Also,  I believe the idea is to install software in each tablet that relays new Bitcoin transactions throughout the network.
It would not store the entire blockchain.  I will need advice from the core developers in regards to what will be the most useful and practical.
If the Bitcoin software degrades the end user experience,  I don't think they will be willing to install it.

I'm not a developer, but I think I have a pretty good understanding under the hood to confidently suggest the following: don't bother having tablets be relays.  These are far better suited to being a client of some other more powerful server.  If there were a common language/API where such client could get services from any one of several providers, that might be way more attractive than having an app that depends on a single service that could go rogue, down, or otherwise change plans anytime.

An app that simply did "relaying" would simply consume the user's resources - in painful showstopper quantities - without adding any useful benefit to the Bitcoin network.

Without the block chain, the app can't validate transactions (so it doesn't know what's OK to relay and what's not), and it can't satisfy requests for historical blocks from peers trying to get their block chain for the first time.  Setting aside the fact that at a minimum, the entire subset of the block chain representing unspent transactions is needed to validate transactions, validating ECDSA signatures (to know whether they're worth relaying) is CPU-intensive enough by itself to matter enormously for a low-power device.

Consider, in comparison, a self-proclaimed "supernode" like Blockchain.info, which boasts "3356 nodes connected" at the bottom of their page.  If this is really a single Bitcoin node that is very well connected, this is the sort of thing that boosts propagation: the moment any transaction hits Blockchain.info, it will be instantly propagated to 3355 other nodes in a single hop.  The more nodes like this we can encourage to exist... this will give the P2P network the boost I think you are hoping for.

As Bitcoin grows and the transaction volume increases, unfortunately the kind of P2P network needed to sustain it will consist of highly-connected highly-powered nodes, rather than lots of low-power low-bandwidth ones.  This is just a simple matter of relatively undisputed fact, stemming from the current design of "all nodes must process all transactions".

+1