Author: Mike Hearn 2013-09-09 11:43:40
Published on: 2013-09-09T11:43:40+00:00
The discussion is about the requirement of a signed certificate for using the payment protocol. The difficulty of obtaining such a certificate depends on cert authorities' policies. StartSSL provides it for free by verifying an email address through a clickable link. Although not optimized for usability, there is no technical reason why one couldn't be. It is suggested that the market is competitive. Additionally, the option of extending the payment protocol to support other forms of PKI exists. However, from a technical perspective, X.509 PKI is fine. One can set up their own CA for the Bitcoin community and convince wallet developers to include their root cert. It was previously thought that the payment protocol was mostly developed for merchants. However, the payment protocol is designed to handle identity details. The recipient would vend a PaymentRequest containing identity details, while the sender would submit a Payment containing their own identity details. The wallet then understands what to do.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T16:37:53.832036+00:00