Author: Andy Schroder 2014-10-17 19:58:48
Published on: 2014-10-17T19:58:48+00:00
The author of this email introduces two proposed BIPs that focus on implementing the payment protocol using Bluetooth connections. The use of Bluetooth is crucial due to potential lack of internet access at many points of sale, either due to lack of cellular coverage or financial constraints prohibiting the payer from maintaining a cellular internet service plan. These BIPs are modeled after Andreas Schildbach's Android Bitcoin Wallet's Bluetooth capability, and there is an additional parameter added to the bitcoin: URI scheme which applies to both Bluetooth and HTTP payment protocol requests allowing for a hash of the payment request to be included.The author seeks feedback from wallet developers and others on these proposals as widespread Bluetooth support among wallets is very important to them. They provide links to copies of the proposed BIPs and a video demonstration of many of the features using Schildbach's wallet and their fuel pump. There are also known issues with the Bluetooth communication scheme and general payment protocol that the author and Andreas would like feedback on. These issues include inconsistencies in connection header messages between payment request and payment connection, unauthenticated Bluetooth connections for newer devices subject to man-in-the-middle attacks and older devices being unsecure and unauthenticated, no acknowledgement failure message possible in the payment protocol, amount of data stored in QR codes may be getting large when a backwards compatible URL is used, and the backward compatibility in the protocol buffer format not providing the last item in the array for a repeated field. Possible alternatives to the proposed solution are suggested, such as reversing the order of the parameter numbers in the payment_url compared to the bitcoin URL "r parameter" or creating a new payment_url_multi repeated field for future use. The author concludes by welcoming comments and suggestions from readers.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T03:14:30.537759+00:00