Bitcoin Gateway

Bitcoin Gateway - A Peer-to-peer Bitcoin Vault and Payment Network
The Bitcoin Gateway is an overlay network over the core Bitcoin P2P network. It is implemented as a P2P Kademlia network and is used to store encrypted bitcoin wallets, email address to bitcoin address mappings, and to facilitate automated processing of bitcoin transactions by merchants. For bitcoin users, it provides automatated storage of the wallet in the cloud, ability to send and receive bitcoins using an email address, and access to the wallet from any device that supports a web browser. For merchants it provides the ability to bill customers using an email address, and track receipt of payments all through a web API and without needing to setup any server software. The resulting system will be able to provide features similar to centralized online payment systems such as PayPal while maintaining the decentralized goal of bitcoin. We feel that this key infrastructure software will be critical to facilitating wider adoption of bitcoin.

The features and advantages provided by the bitcoin gateway and thin bitcoin client proposed in this paper include:

• Instant client start up time. No need to load the block chain.
• Ability to access ones bitcoins from multiple devices without having to carry around a wallet file.
• The ability to run the thin client program on any platform that supports a web browser, including mobile devices.
• Automatic encryption and cloud storage of the bitcoin wallets, while still allowing the ability to store the wallets securely on a local device.
• Allowing users to send bitcoins by email addresses instead of bitcoin addresses.
• Allowing merchants to bill customers using email addresses and tracking receipt of payment.
• Allowing merchants to automate order processing.
• Allowing multiple wallets with different access codes.
• Preventing the lose of bitcoins due to forgetting passwords.
• Preventing the lose of bitcoins due to death.
• No changes required to the core bitcoin network software.

A possible implemention of the Bitcoin Gateway could be:

       ------------------       --------------------
       | TomP2P         |       | BitcoinJS-Server |
       | DHT storage    |       | Bitcoin Network  |
       ------------------       --------------------
               ^                         ^
               |                         |
               |   -------------------   |
               |   | Web Server      |   |
               |-->| Gateway API     |<--|
                   -------------------    
                            ^
                            |
                            v
                   -------------------    
                   | Web Browser     |    
                   | Thin Client     |    
                   -------------------    

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