Hello,I'd like to introduce two proposed BIPs. They are primarily focused on implementing the payment protocol using bluetooth connections. I've been working on automated point of sale devices and bluetooth communication is critical in my mind due to the potential lack of internet access at many points of sale, either due to lack of cellular internet coverage, lack of payee providing wireless internet, and/or due to financial constraints of the payer prohibiting them from maintaining a cellular internet service plan. These BIPs are largely modeled after the current functionality of Andreas Schildbach's android Bitcoin Wallet's bluetooth capability. I've discussed the communication scheme with him in depth and believe these proposals to clearly and accurately represent the communication scheme.
There is also an additional &h= parameter added to the bitcoin: URI scheme which applies to both bluetooth and http payment protocol requests which allows for a hash of the payment request to be included. This hash was proposed by Andreas as an amendment to BIP72, but others preferred not to amend BIP72 since it has already been put into place. The current version of Schildbach's bitcoin wallet already supports the "h parameter".
I'd appreciate feedback from everyone, particularly wallet developers as widespread bluetooth support among wallets is very important to me. I'm also very new to this mailing list as well as the BIP writing process, so I'd appreciate your understanding if my conventions are not standard. I am currently using the naming conventions "TBIP", so that I can propose /temporary/ BIP numbers, and cross reference between the two. Obviously these will change if the BIPs are formally adopted. You can find a copy of these proposed BIPs at the following links:
* https://github.com/AndySchroder/bips/blob/master/tbip-0074.mediawiki * https://github.com/AndySchroder/bips/blob/master/tbip-0075.mediawikiIf you are interested, you can see a demonstration of many of the proposed features using Schildbach's wallet and my fuel pump in a video I recently created: https://youtu.be/kkVAhA75k1Y . The main thing not implemented is multiple URLs for the payment protocol, so, as a hack, I'm just presenting https vi QR code and bluetooth via NFC on my fuel pump for now.
There are a few known issues that could be improved to this bluetooth communication scheme as well as the general payment protocol and myself and Andreas would like to receive feedback regarding concerns and potential solutions. Some of the known issues are:
* There may seem to be some inconsistency in the connection header
messages between the payment request connection and the payment
connection. This is largely because it is how Andreas originally
implemented the communication and is hesitant to change it since
there are many instances of is software already deployed that
implement this scheme.
* The current method uses an unauthenticated bluetooth connection for
bluetooth 2.1 and newer devices (subject to man in the middle
attacks, but not passive eavesdroppers), and an unsecure and
unauthenticated connection for older devices. The known concerns
here are that someone within 100 meters of the payer could track the
bitcoin addresses used for the transaction and could possibly
replace the refund address by submitting a forged payment message to
the payee. Requiring bluetooth 2.1 and authenticating the connection
out of band unfortunately don't seem to be as straightforward/simple
of a task with most bluetooth libraries (although I'd love for
someone to prove me wrong). It's possible this communication scheme
could be extended to use an https "like" protocol that would not
care if the underlying bluetooth connection is authenticated or
encrypted. It's actually possible that http over a bluetooth socket
(instead of tcp socket) could be implemented, however it is
presently uncertain whether this would be too slow, too much
overhead (both on the devices software and communication), or if
http could easily be run over bluetooth sockets on all platforms.
* There is no acknowledgement failure message possible in the payment
protocol, only an acknowledgement message or lack of acknowledgement
message. This issue seems to be a concern and as a result, the memo
field is used to send an "ack" or "nack" in Schildbach's wallet. Can
we add a boolean status field to the payment acknowledgement message?
* I'd personally like a new optional boolean field added to the
"PaymentDetails" portion of the "PaymentRequest" to allow for the
payer's wallet to match the "Output" optional "amount" fields as a
total amount of all Outputs, rather than requiring the amount for
each output to be matched exactly. As it currently is, the payee can
specify multiple receiving addresses in order to require a payer
split up the payments so that when the payee then goes to spend the
funds later, they don't necessarily have to give their payees as
much knowledge of their balances and spending and receiving habits
and sources. As the payment protocol currently is requiring all
output amounts to be matched exactly for each output, there is no
flexibility given to the payer in order to reduce a merging or
unnecessary diverging of account funds, which can reduce the privacy
of both the payer and the payee. If the payee were given the option
to allow the payer the option to divide the amounts amount the
outputs intelligently, there can be some privacy gained.
* Amount of data stored in QR codes may be getting large when a
backwards compatible URL is used (for wallets that don't support the
payment protocol) and can be difficult to scan with outdoor screens
that have an extra weather resistant pane when in direct sunlight.
* The number of offline transactions of a wallet is limited to the
known unspent outputs when they go offline. Long term, I'd like to
see wallet devices that can use systems such as Kryptoradio's DVB-T
based broadcast (but this will need yet another radio!). Another
project may be to develop a blockchain query protocol of some kind
where retailers can provide access to blockchain data so that
customer's wallets can update their known unspent outputs via
bluetooth. It's possible such a bluetooth system could be used in
combination of "Kryptoradio" like broadcasts to provide multiple
blockchain references.
* The additional payment_url approach is a bit sloppy of a solution in
the PaymentDetails portion of the PaymentRequest. It would have been
ideal to just change this from an optional field to a repeated
field, however, the backwards compatibility in the protocol buffer
format will provide the last item in the array for a repeated field
(to a code that expects it to be an optional field), rather than the
first. Because of this, backwards compatibility with https payment
requests wouldn't work if the payment_url field is just changed to a
repeated field.
o Possible alternatives to what is described in the proposed BIP
+ Change payment_url to a repeated field and then reverse the
order of the parameter numbers in the payment_url, compared
to the bitcoin URL "r parameter".
+ Create an additional, new payment_url_multi repeated field
(or some better name), and then leave the original
payment_url field in there for backwards compatibility (and
then maybe phase it out in the future).
o Reference
+ https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/proto#updating
# "|optional| is compatible with |repeated|. Given
serialized data of a repeated field as input, clients
that expect this field to be |optional| will take the
last input value if it's a primitive type field or merge
all input elements if it's a message type field."
Your comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
--
Andy Schroder
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