Re: decentralized wallets and payment processors

> On 7 Apr 2015, at 01:40, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I've been sketching out an implementation of a payment processor and wallet system lately
> 
> Turns out decentralized wallets are a really hard problem to solve
> 
> Some thoughts I had:
> 
> 1. A multi user wallet, seems to be roughly the same thing as a payment processor, when in a decentralized environment
> 
> 2. A decentralized payment wallet / payment processor should be able to largely live in the browser
> 
> Note: I'm looking at this from the perspective of crypto currencies to start with.  Fiat may require more thought / work.
> 
> Some questions:
> 
> Would these two goals be desirable to the group, because it's what I'm trying to create?
> 
> Are there any technical barriers why this would be impossible using web technology?
> 
> Or is it out of scope for this version?

I guess depends upon what function you want to be realised by wallets.  The analogy with personal physical wallets and purses points to the idea of digital wallets that hold “cash”, payment cards, loyalty cards, identity cards, prepaid vouchers, discount coupons and tickets. This model presumes that each wallet belongs to a single person.

A related perspective is on wallet synchronisation.  Imagine that a user have the same wallet installed on a number of different devices. The aim is to synchronise changes when the wallets are online. For instance, copying new receipts to the other wallets. Synchronisation would also apply to user preferences, and to payment instruments.  This could be implemented via keeping a copy of wallet in the cloud, or via peer to peer connections where each instance of the wallet has the list for the set of instances.   The peer to peer approach is more complex as you need to allow for devices being offline so that they have to be synchronised later when they next go online.  Moreover in principle, there could be more than one wallet with new receipts etc.  One solution involves a mechanism for electing one of the devices as a temporary master that manages version control. Another solution is based upon clock synchronisation.

—
   Dave Raggett <dsr@w3.org <mailto:dsr@w3.org>>