How would you like to design a bitcoin banknote?

[unclemantis]

I have drafted a proposal for how I think password-protected private keys should work, and published it in the Wiki.

Thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97752.0
Wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/User:Casascius/Base58Check-encoded_objects_proposal

Looking forward to it!

[a5an0]

psy: awesome design. I really like it.

Why not fold it in thirds instead of in-half, that way the address is right there, but you have to unfold it to get to the private key. Psy's design would look awesome with the address on the "front" of the packet and the big B on the back. You can easily secure it with a piece of tape if you feel so inclined.

[bg002h]

Very successful thread. Great designs guys.

[420]

payments for genius art can be directed to: 1RXWrxw3JBVv4AKy9UGSrXnQefwzWJUmM

Nice art

[midnightlightning]

Thanks for the great design, Psy. Though for my preference, the "field" curves around the upper-right and lower-left logos are a bit too blocky. So I created my own variant:



Updated ZIP with the PSD and PNGs of each layer available here, should anyone else want to utilize.

[Gyrsur]

can anybody post all 4 bills in one post so it is easier to vote?

[midnightlightning]

can anybody post all 4 bills in one post so it is easier to vote?

Voting is finished, though the four candidates are collected here in the "call to vote" post by casascius.

I think I have just about got the reward payout scheme just about finalized.  And the gracious donation of 10BTC, I think I am going to say should go to the person who successfully marries the BitAddress.org codebase with the SVG version of what is pretty much certainly the first-place winner: the banknote presented to us by Psy.

I plan to tackle integrating this with BitAddress.org's code, though it won't be the SVG version, since the QR code generation on BitAddress.org uses HTML Canvas elements, not SVG elements. So there's two ways to go on this: use the existing BitAddress.org QR library and draw the full banknote as a canvas element (using JPEG/PNG version of the banknote background; output would be a canvas element, which the browser would render as JPEG or PNG. Might be less quality on a print) or find a new QR library that can generate SVG output (could print higher res) rather than canvas (or modify the existing QR library to be SVG; haven't checked to see how hard that is...).

EDIT: Working version of BitAddress.org code with Psy's banknote backgrounds: https://github.com/MidnightLightning/bitaddress.org

[casascius]

I plan to tackle integrating this with BitAddress.org's code, though it won't be the SVG version, since the QR code generation on BitAddress.org uses HTML Canvas elements, not SVG elements. So there's two ways to go on this: use the existing BitAddress.org QR library and draw the full banknote as a canvas element (using JPEG/PNG version of the banknote background; output would be a canvas element, which the browser would render as JPEG or PNG. Might be less quality on a print) or find a new QR library that can generate SVG output (could print higher res) rather than canvas (or modify the existing QR library to be SVG; haven't checked to see how hard that is...).

EDIT: Working version of BitAddress.org code with Psy's banknote backgrounds: https://github.com/MidnightLightning/bitaddress.org

This would work better if it used PNG without JPEG compression... there are visible JPEG compression artifacts in the output that are very apparent when printed to paper.  Since the target media is a printer, the image should ideally be at a much higher resolution appropriate for a printer.

Resolution for a QR code is not really an issue: it is a low-resolution raster image to begin with.  As long as the transitions from black to white are reasonably sharp, and as long as the browser isn't creating grey areas in the process of scaling, there is no benefit to be derived from increasing their resolution.

[a5an0]

can anybody post all 4 bills in one post so it is easier to vote?

Voting is finished, though the four candidates are collected here in the "call to vote" post by casascius.

I think I have just about got the reward payout scheme just about finalized.  And the gracious donation of 10BTC, I think I am going to say should go to the person who successfully marries the BitAddress.org codebase with the SVG version of what is pretty much certainly the first-place winner: the banknote presented to us by Psy.

I plan to tackle integrating this with BitAddress.org's code, though it won't be the SVG version, since the QR code generation on BitAddress.org uses HTML Canvas elements, not SVG elements. So there's two ways to go on this: use the existing BitAddress.org QR library and draw the full banknote as a canvas element (using JPEG/PNG version of the banknote background; output would be a canvas element, which the browser would render as JPEG or PNG. Might be less quality on a print) or find a new QR library that can generate SVG output (could print higher res) rather than canvas (or modify the existing QR library to be SVG; haven't checked to see how hard that is...).

EDIT: Working version of BitAddress.org code with Psy's banknote backgrounds: https://github.com/MidnightLightning/bitaddress.org

Looks awesome so far! I'm going to print out a few tomorrow and see how they look

[midnightlightning]

This would work better if it used PNG without JPEG compression... there are visible JPEG compression artifacts in the output that are very apparent when printed to paper.  Since the target media is a printer, the image should ideally be at a much higher resolution appropriate for a printer.

Agreed; I just used the JPEG for proof-of-concept because the image-to-data-url converter I found had a max size limit. Moving it to PNG or at least a higher-quality JPEG would be ideal. I kept with the bitaddress.org concept of having everything in one file to make it easy for offline use, though I am considering modifying it to be one HTML file and one image file. That way people could "roll their own" bitnotes by changing the image file and parameters in the source (which dictate where the text goes). If I keep the "one file" style, I'll just need to build my own data-url converter or find an existing one that takes larger file sizes.

I'll probably move to making each note one canvas element, which will git rid of the browser inconsistencies with CSS transforms and absolute positioning. Plus that will make each note able to be right-clicked and saved as a separate image if people so desire.

[Clark]

EDIT: Working version of BitAddress.org code with Psy's banknote backgrounds: https://github.com/MidnightLightning/bitaddress.org

Great work!

One gripe though: the QR codes are not completely aligned with the canvas pixels, and thus they look a bit fuzzy. I think  this has to do with the canvas pixel numbering scheme. I believe if you add 0.5 to the location of all pixels in your output, then canvas will draw in the center of the pixel instead of on the edge.

c.f. http://diveintohtml5.info/canvas.html#pixel-madness

[ErebusBat]

can anybody post all 4 bills in one post so it is easier to vote?

Voting is finished, though the four candidates are collected here in the "call to vote" post by casascius.

I think I have just about got the reward payout scheme just about finalized.  And the gracious donation of 10BTC, I think I am going to say should go to the person who successfully marries the BitAddress.org codebase with the SVG version of what is pretty much certainly the first-place winner: the banknote presented to us by Psy.

I plan to tackle integrating this with BitAddress.org's code, though it won't be the SVG version, since the QR code generation on BitAddress.org uses HTML Canvas elements, not SVG elements. So there's two ways to go on this: use the existing BitAddress.org QR library and draw the full banknote as a canvas element (using JPEG/PNG version of the banknote background; output would be a canvas element, which the browser would render as JPEG or PNG. Might be less quality on a print) or find a new QR library that can generate SVG output (could print higher res) rather than canvas (or modify the existing QR library to be SVG; haven't checked to see how hard that is...).

EDIT: Working version of BitAddress.org code with Psy's banknote backgrounds: https://github.com/MidnightLightning/bitaddress.org

Good god that is sexy

[midnightlightning]

I think  this has to do with the canvas pixel numbering scheme. I believe if you add 0.5 to the location of all pixels in your output, then canvas will draw in the center of the pixel instead of on the edge.

Ah yes, I've done that with SVG output to be more crisp; didn't realize canvas had the same unintuitive process. I'll update that along with making the whole banknote a canvas element.

[casascius]

I noticed in the SVG file that some of the elements (specifically: the grid lines in the background and the mathematical formula) are not vectors, they are base64-encoded PNGs. I am wondering if anyone else has noticed this or worked around it.

[Raoul Duke]

I noticed in the SVG file that some of the elements (specifically: the grid lines in the background and the mathematical formula) are not vectors, they are base64-encoded PNGs. I am wondering if anyone else has noticed this or worked around it.

The mathematical formula is originally an SVG, not sure how it got included as a png when I composed the full note.
Still working on converting the grids into SVG, but it isn't as easy as I told you on my PM and not really sure if I can do it without making them from scratch.

[BTC-engineer]

can anybody post all 4 bills in one post so it is easier to vote?

Voting is finished, though the four candidates are collected here in the "call to vote" post by casascius.

I think I have just about got the reward payout scheme just about finalized.  And the gracious donation of 10BTC, I think I am going to say should go to the person who successfully marries the BitAddress.org codebase with the SVG version of what is pretty much certainly the first-place winner: the banknote presented to us by Psy.

I plan to tackle integrating this with BitAddress.org's code, though it won't be the SVG version, since the QR code generation on BitAddress.org uses HTML Canvas elements, not SVG elements. So there's two ways to go on this: use the existing BitAddress.org QR library and draw the full banknote as a canvas element (using JPEG/PNG version of the banknote background; output would be a canvas element, which the browser would render as JPEG or PNG. Might be less quality on a print) or find a new QR library that can generate SVG output (could print higher res) rather than canvas (or modify the existing QR library to be SVG; haven't checked to see how hard that is...).

EDIT: Working version of BitAddress.org code with Psy's banknote backgrounds: https://github.com/MidnightLightning/bitaddress.org

There seems to be a bug. In the QR-code field of the private key is the public key, so both QR-codes are the same and are reflecting the public key. The private key in text format is correct.

[unclemantis]

can anybody post all 4 bills in one post so it is easier to vote?

Voting is finished, though the four candidates are collected here in the "call to vote" post by casascius.

I think I have just about got the reward payout scheme just about finalized.  And the gracious donation of 10BTC, I think I am going to say should go to the person who successfully marries the BitAddress.org codebase with the SVG version of what is pretty much certainly the first-place winner: the banknote presented to us by Psy.

I plan to tackle integrating this with BitAddress.org's code, though it won't be the SVG version, since the QR code generation on BitAddress.org uses HTML Canvas elements, not SVG elements. So there's two ways to go on this: use the existing BitAddress.org QR library and draw the full banknote as a canvas element (using JPEG/PNG version of the banknote background; output would be a canvas element, which the browser would render as JPEG or PNG. Might be less quality on a print) or find a new QR library that can generate SVG output (could print higher res) rather than canvas (or modify the existing QR library to be SVG; haven't checked to see how hard that is...).

EDIT: Working version of BitAddress.org code with Psy's banknote backgrounds: https://github.com/MidnightLightning/bitaddress.org

YA BABY! Freaking awesome!!!!! I have been waiting for this!

[unclemantis]

Can someone provide a service that provides just the note design the same way that blank check designs are presented and sold at places like office supply stores and allow us to print onto it in just blank ink the QR codes, amount and keys? Now that is something I would pay for!

[casascius]

Can someone provide a service that provides just the note design the same way that blank check designs are presented and sold at places like office supply stores and allow us to print onto it in just blank ink the QR codes, amount and keys? Now that is something I would pay for!

I thought of this... like having a print job run of pre-perforated paper with the bill artwork pre-printed, where you can run them through your printer to add the QR codes and then tear along the perfs.  Of course it will look better if you cut it with a proper cutter, but the perfs are quick and convenient on the go.

[unclemantis]

Can someone provide a service that provides just the note design the same way that blank check designs are presented and sold at places like office supply stores and allow us to print onto it in just blank ink the QR codes, amount and keys? Now that is something I would pay for!

I thought of this... like having a print job run of pre-perforated paper with the bill artwork pre-printed, where you can run them through your printer to add the QR codes and then tear along the perfs.  Of course it will look better if you cut it with a proper cutter, but the perfs are quick and convenient on the go.

i am not sure what the setup and minimum run would be for offset, but I am down. Count me in for donation for start-up. Perhaps a percentage of the proceeds for each pad sold? IDK.

Thoughts?