New doc RE Addresses on Beam

Development
1

We have written a new doc with the purpose of explaining everything there is to know about Addresses on Beam and some propositions for improvements, because the address system is much more complex than it needs to be.

Please read it and let us know if you have any questions.

2

The Owner Key sounds more like a View Key and if that’s the case then I think the name should change.

In addition to that, when the wallet is restored, the addresses are not preserved (new wallet instance generates new addresses).

Yes, this happened to me and I had to manually update all published media donation info. Not good!

Btw, I like Payment Proofs.

Now, allow me to paint a picture of a real life retail checkout experience. The key word here is EXPERIENCE, because the retailer wants to engage customers…

  1. Customer chooses to pay with Beam, great!
  2. Cashier generates a one-time payment code (QR) that expires in, say, two minutes.
  3. That payment code is pushed into a special miners mempool, declaring a two minute window AND the retailer is going to pay the senders fee. It doesn’t matter that the fee is small because EVERYONE LOVES FREE.
  4. Customer pays with their Beam wallet and instantly the wallet receives a discount voucher that can be redeemed no later than date X. That discount voucher can only be redeemed at this store.
  5. Customer’s wallet has a special Vouchers tab showing all the current vouchers they have collected across different retailers.

Why stop there, why not also have a tab for automatic subscriptions?

The point is, privacy is the back end and the B2C experience is the front end. This should be your guiding light.

3

All the keys are generated using Master Key, from the provided key number. Normally they’re picked at random, and not shown to the user. But we can show them. By such users will be able to re-generate the same addresses after the wallet is restored. Which will be a huge UX improvement.

4

makes sense.
But I wouldn’t do this now, it’ll only increase the mess and confusions. The “owner key” was there from the very beginning.