Author: Jim 2012-12-04 19:56:38
Published on: 2012-12-04T19:56:38+00:00
In a Bitcoin Development mailing list, the topic of discussion was how to get more users onto Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) clients rather than full clients. Mike Hearn proposed the idea of presenting users with more options than just downloading the full client when they visit bitcoin.org. He suggested that something like "To get started, download wallet apps A or B" would be a better approach. However, he acknowledged that it is too early to implement this.Alan Reiner suggested that an ideal first client should start up and be usable within a couple of minutes, support Windows, Linux, and OSX, and use deterministic wallets that can produce a permanent backup. While MultiBit satisfies the first two criteria, it doesn't have enough staff behind it to be the center of attention.Gregory Maxwell strongly believes that if there is no community lead with client software which is not a full capable node then Bitcoin will fail or at least fail to be anything but the world's most inefficient centralized payment system. Mark Friedenbach proposed that Alan's UTxO meta-chain proposal becomes easier to do now that ultraprune is merged. Mike thinks MultiBit is maturing into a client that he would feel comfortable recommending to end-users who take the fast-start path. However, it still has some serious lacks such as encrypted wallets that aren't released yet, bloom filters will help performance a lot, and needs to catch up with some newer features. Mike also mentions that there doesn't have to be one true client - instead, Bitcoin-Qt could have an SPV mode. MultiBit has some unique features that are quite useful-like integrating charting and exchange rate feeds.Will suggests that vetted cloud services could be an option for people instead of directing them to a list of clients. Blockchain.info seems quite well-engineered and satisfies many of the features in particular a very low cost of entry, cross-platform support, and what appears to be very good security (e.g. two-factor). The email ends with a link to multibit.org, which is a website for MultiBit, a client for digital currencies like Bitcoin.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T09:33:39.718722+00:00