Problem: common language for Bitcoin wallets

[Itskok]

Hi!
I am trying to solve some practical problem.
I want to send Bitcoin to someone but without using Bitcoin address.
Lets use something different, like the "User Name" or some other "Alias".
For most of the examples, if we both using the same "Wallet" or service there is probably solution for that (If both users have "CoinBase" account I think or some other popular wallets they can send each other directly), but what happen if someone from "MyWallet" want to send money to "Steve Jobs" account that located on "BitPay"? so Steave must give him his address because its two different Bitcoin services.
 

I am trying to find some common language for Bitcoin wallets that works without addresses.
Is there any API available that can give me access to the User Names of the popular Bitcoin wallets? (It's not sound so smart, I know)
I am building function for my users (Some kind of payment system), Its an option of sending Bitcoins to some "User Name" and behind that name I will take the transaction request and connect it to real Bitcoin transaction with API of course for all the popular wallets user names, The user will not feel addresses in that way.

https://blockchain.info/api
https://www.coinbase.com/docs/api/overview
https://bitpay.com/developers

I am a bad developer so I don’t understand all the meanings of those interfaces.
Don’t tell me "why you need it, just use Bitcoin address!" because I am trying to find a way not to use this addresses because I think it will be a much better way in the future…
(and of course we use addresses, I just mean that it will not be shown to the users).

Tnx!

[dabura667]

https://onename.io/

This is the only service I think that is close to what you're saying.

They use Namecoin to register Bitcoin addresses and offer an API to query the Namecoin blockchain and look up the bitcoin address by just querying the onename ID.

Your service could implement onename... but unfortunately, there will always be services that only offer bitcoin addresses, and onename is an opt-in service.

I think Bitcoin is still very small, so people are trying to find out what works best.

If you want to make something new that everyone will use, then awesome.

[DannyHamilton]

There is no single standard way to do what you are trying to do.

Each service (such as coinbase, bitpay, etc) that has users has their own proprietary system of tracking users.  You would have to contact every service that you want to interface with and negotiate directly with them a method of doing what you want to accomplish.

[gmaxwell]

You could save both of us some time and just send all those funds to me directly.

You know what you're asking to do is "not smart"... that it's just going to directly result in the funds being lost to thieves who simply impersonate everyone. So why do you still seek to do it?

[Itskok]

You could save both of us some time and just send all those funds to me directly.

You know what you're asking to do is "not smart"... that it's just going to directly result in the funds being lost to thieves who simply impersonate everyone. So why do you still seek to do it?

I am trying to find some common language for Bitcoin wallets that works without addresses.

And of course that if you take any attempt to make things simpler to the users to the "dark side" its looks like a scam. but its not.
As DannyHamilton says,its all about creating direct channels between existing services,I think it will happen in the future in some way,we just need to think creative,not every attempt to solve a problem is a way of fraud.

tnx guys!

[gmaxwell]

Bitcoin payment URLs allow you to use bitcoin without addresses. And generally without grievous security problems.

[PRab]

I believe you are going to fundamentally run into Zooko's triangle. You cannot have something that is Human-meaningful, Decentralized, and Secure at the same time. Bitcoin addresses fulfill Decentralized and Secure, but are not Human-meaningful. You are trying to add the Human-meaningful property, so you will need to pick which of the other 2 to give up.

[hhanh00]

You are linking to a page that states the conjecture is disproved. And by something related to bitcoin nonetheless.

[Itskok]

Well i think that the idea beyond onename.io is exactly what i was looking for,tnx guys!
But the success of this project depends on the cooperation of the bitcoin users,and still i think that the direction is very good.

About the "Zooko's triangle" i think that when you use third party wallets (Bitpay,Coinbase,Mywallet) you break the triangle in the "Decentralized" point,
and then you can perform my idea. and yet i think there are some more ways to win this theory when using Bitcoin.

[Razick]

The way to do that would be to create an API allowing addresses to be "registered" by their owners to a name. This API could be accessed by wallet software to implement alias functionality and automatically register addresses to that alias. I thought about doing that at one point.

I think it is very likely that something like this will become common at some point. Hopefully it will be done in a secure and decentralized manner.

[548845]

How about RushWallet?

[luv2drnkbr]

BIP0072 does this for merchants by allowing them to generate tx info that the client can download by just clicking a URI.  Namecoin, and the service OneName, currently store dictionaries on the Namecoin ledger, much of which is identity info.  You just need to build a call to the Namecoin client and parse the dictionary for the "bitcoin" key.  For example, one of the dev's has the name "domob" on the id/ namespace, so if you call up id/domob, you'd get a Bitcoin address of 1domobKsPZ5cWk2kXssD8p8ES1qffGUCm.  Bitmessage already integrates Namecoin into their application.  So if you have Namecoin running in server mode, you could just type "domob" into the recipient field and it would go find his address of BM-GtQnWM3vcdorfqpKXsmfHQ4rVYPG5pKS.  Other than OneName, there's not many services trying to do that type of thing yet.

And Bitcoin wallets *do* already speak the same language -- they all understand addresses and transactions and blocks and so forth.  They will likely never understand human readable names associated with addresses, because you have to have a method of associating those names with account numbers (addresses), which would mean a hard fork of the protocol to basically merge namecoin into it.  But I could definitely see lite clients that also run Namecoin and handle that alias stuff (and prove alias's by referencing the alias assignment tx via SPV -- although I don't know how they'd prove no new name updates), so to the user it *appears* like Bitcoin uses aliases.  Mix in associating stealth addresses with names instead of static bitcoin addresses, as well as BIP0070 merge avoidance multiple-tx satisfaction of payment requests, and you could have a very good and very privacy-friendly system that to the user is very friendly and only shows the alias names and looks "simple" and "just works".