More wallet providers coming on?

General Questions
1

Hi all,

There are very few wallet providers in the space. This is not great for the ecosystem, particularly as it feels that decentralization is a key virtue for such projects.

Does anyone know if more providers can be expected soon, and what work is being done to attract people to provide the service.

Thanks,
Matt

2

Hi Matt,

I think between Fynbos, Coil and the ILF, we’re engaging in various stages with different potential wallets to join the network. Because the barrier to join is quite specific(wallets need to have some sort of money license, and comply with KYC regulations), it’s a long process.

The most promising work is probably coming out of Fynbos. They’re having a Twitter Space next week to discuss some of that work, I encourage you to keep an eye out for that and join to ask questions. I know I personally will do that!

Cheers,
Alex

1 Like
3

Thanks Alex. Look forward to sharing more details next week

4

Thanks @laka that would be good to hear about.

Out of interest, is there any theoretical way that wallets could be issued without a money license etc. just as e.g. Ethereum addresses are created by open-source software wallets?

5

Theoretically, anything that hosts a node service in the network can be a wallet. Practically, you need to peer with an existing node in the network to join the network. And because of that peering relationship, no node is willing to take that kind of risk to peer with an unlicensed node.

6

If wallet providers require authorization from the government, isn’t it centralized? Also isn’t this based on Ripple, so shouldn’t I just be able to send ripple from one payment pointer to another? Why doesn’t Coil allow payments in ripple or any other currency? Also I heard ripple is effectively centralized, is this true and doesn’t it effect interledger? Sorry for all the questions.

7

Re: Decentralized Identifiers and Registries thereof and, FWIU, DHS, at least:

From “Response to ‘Call for Review: Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) v1.0’” (2021)

“Use Cases and Requirements for Decentralized Identifiers” https:// www.w3. org/TR/did-use-cases/

  1. Use Cases: Online shopper, Vehicle assemblies, Confidential Customer Engagement, Accessing Master Data of Entities, Transferable Skills Credentials, Cross-platform User-driven Sharing, Pseudonymous Work, Pseudonymity within a supply chain, Digital Permanent Resident Card, Importing retro toys, Public authority identity credentials (eIDAS), Correlation-controlled Services

And then, IIUC W3C Verifiable Credentials / ld-proofs can be signed with W3C DID keys - that can also be generated or registered centrally, like hosted wallets or custody services. There are many Use Cases for Verifiable Credentials: Verifiable Credentials Use Cases :

  1. User Needs: Education, Retail, Finance, Healthcare, Professional Credentials, Legal Identity, Devices

  2. User Tasks: Issue Claim, Assert Claim, Verify Claim, Store / Move Claim, Retrieve Claim, Revoke Claim

  3. Focal Use Cases: Citizenship by Parentage, Expert Dive Instructor, International Travel with Minor and Upgrade

  4. User Sequences: How a Verifiable Credential Might Be Created, How a Verifiable Credential Might Be Used

IIRC DHS funded some of the W3C DID and Verified Credentials specification efforts. See also: https:// news.ycombinator. com/item?id=26758099

There’s probably already a good way to bridge between sub-SKU GS1 schema. org/identifier on barcodes and QR codes and with DIDs. For GS1, you must register a ~namespace prefix and then you can use the rest of the available address space within the barcode or QR code IIUC.

DIDs can replace ORCIDs - which you can also just generate a new one of - for academics seeking to group their ScholarlyArticles by a better identifier than a transient university email address.

The new UUID formats may or may not be optionally useful in conjunction with W3C DID, VC, and Verifiable News, etc. https:// news.ycombinator. com/item?id=28088213

When would a DID be a better choice than a UUID?

Accounts must not be point-of-failure dependent upon Exchanges, which must comply with KYC/AML per the sovereign territory that they operate within.

The ability to move funds between self-generated accounts - assymetric private and public keys generated hierarchically from a recovery seed such that Wallet(s) of Accounts can be recovered in a device-independent way - is an expectation of retail cryptoasset consumers in legal markets today.

Is this possible with ILP? In the United States?

8

@laka @adrianhopebailie Do you or anyone else have any clearer answers to this question? We have been working on an Interledger-based project for some time, and this has been one of the main pain points - it’s actually caused us a lot of trouble.

I think it’s critical to give people a sense of what to expect in this regard to resolve uncertainty. Without that resolution, it will be hard to make the case that our Interledger-based solution is likely to be effective/competitive as other “internet-of-value”/web3 protocols continue to develop.

9

Let me try to take those questions one at a time:

If wallet providers require authorization from the government, isn’t it centralized?

It’s regulated, not centralized. Similar to the Internet.

Also isn’t this based on Ripple, so shouldn’t I just be able to send ripple from one payment pointer to another?

Interledger is not based on Ripple. Some participants choose to do the settlement in XRP, but that happens off the Interledger network.

Why doesn’t Coil allow payments in ripple or any other currency?

I’m not sure, someone from Coil would be better suited to take this one. @uchibeke maybe?

Also I heard ripple is effectively centralized, is this true and doesn’t it effect interledger?

No idea. But either way, it doesn’t affect Interledger.

10

I’m afraid I don’t have a concrete schedule. Getting a new money license is an extremely long process, 18 months is usually a conservative estimate for it.

Maybe Adrian has a clearer timeline for the Fynbos offering.

11

Ripplenet depends upon a list of trusted validator nodes called a UNL, which can you specify on the CLI or send a PR to update in the ripple/rippled fork of the rippled software (which is open source and written in C++ and the origin of Stellar).

(XRP is a token on ripplenet that is premined so that it has low energy cost, a transaction cost less than 1¢, and a 5 second transaction time (ripple consensus ledger time). “RippleCorp” premined all of the XRP token supply, sold blocks of XRP to exchanges, and has escrowed most (?) of the remaining XRP. Volatility in the price of XRP may be less of an issue for [micro]payments because the tx time is so low. Corda (R3, SWIFT,) settles with XRP as well, FWIU)

((XRP is currently delisted from cryptoasset exchanges in the United States due to pending action (to protect investors). XRP continues to trade in non-US markets - particularly Asia and APAC - where it is understood that the seller has no contract for future performance with the buyer and so there is no security contract. Because ripple controls less than 10% of the validators in the default UNL, ripplenet does not depend upon RippleCorp for continued operations.)

Micropayments are only possible with low-fee transactions.

Some way to review WebMonetization-able content and then spend more than e.g. Coil’s default $5/mo would be great for creators.

12

Perhaps it would be best to improve the feature descriptions in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_wallet also because there’s probably no way Wikipedia can host a Comparison page for wallets.

IME, most consumers don’t yet understand the distinction between:

  • hard wallets
    • paper wallets (backup and recovery seed)
    • hardware wallet with no radios
    • hardware wallet with radios and baseband
  • soft wallets
    • desktop app (Bitcoin Core '08)
    • mobile app
  • and then you’ve got your custody services
    • n:m keys
      • SSS Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme
      • multisig transactions / contracts
    • smart contract escrow
      • time-based escrow smart contracts (scheduled transactions)
    • MFA password recovery
      • Something You Have
      • Something You Are
      • Something You Know
      • I lost my e.g. Yubikey or similar
      • this means that someone else holds some or all of the private key(s) necessary to send funds from an account

Which wallets support Inteledger’s way of describing accounts? isn’t it like namespaced ~URIs? (URIs that work with RDF and JSON-LD?)

Which ILP Interledger Protocol features are useful for feature parity with existing wallets?
https://interledger.org/rfcs/0027-interledger-protocol-4/

13

From “ILP Addresses - v2.0.0”
https://interledger.org/rfcs/0015-ilp-addresses/

ILP addresses provide a way to route ILP packets to their intended destination through a series of hops, including any number of ILP Connectors. (This happens after address lookup using a higher-level protocol such as SPSP.) Addresses are not meant to be user-facing, but allow several ASCII characters for easy debugging.
[…]

Example Global Allocation Scheme Addresses
g.acme.bob - a destination address to the account “bob” held with the connector “acme”.

g.us-fed.ach.0.acmebank.swx0a0.acmecorp.sales.199.~ipr.cdfa5e16-e759-4ba3-88f6-8b9dc83c1868.2 - destination address for a particular invoice, which can break down as follows:

  • Neighborhoods: us-fed., ach., 0.
  • Account identifiers: acmebank., swx0a0., acmecorp., sales, 199 (An ACME Corp sales account at ACME Bank)
  • Interactions: ~ipr, cdfa5e16-e759-4ba3-88f6-8b9dc83c1868, 2

SPSP:
https://github.com/interledger/rfcs/blob/master/0009-simple-payment-setup-protocol/0009-simple-payment-setup-protocol.md

Do wallets need to handle ILP addresses and/or SPSP themselves? FWIU, Coil (WebMonetization) regularly batches transactions?

(Edit (due to 3 consecutive replies))

The Simple Payment Setup Protocol (SPSP)
https://github.com/interledger/rfcs/blob/master/0009-simple-payment-setup-protocol/0009-simple-payment-setup-protocol.md :

Relation to Other Protocols
SPSP is used for exchanging connection information before an ILP payment or data transfer is initiated. The SPSP Client and Server use the STREAM transport protocol to generate the ILP packets. The SPSP Server generates the shared secret and ILP address to be used in STREAM and communicates it to the client over HTTPS.

Interfaces
SPSP may be used by end-user applications, such as a digital wallet with a user interface to initiate payments. SPSP Clients and Servers use the STREAM Module to send and receive Interledger payments. Payment pointers can be used as a persistent identifier on Interledger. Payment pointers can also be used as a unique identifier for an invoice to be paid or for a pull payment agreement.

SPSP messages MUST be exchanged over HTTPS.

Payment Pointers and Payment Setup Protocols:
https://github.com/interledger/rfcs/blob/master/0026-payment-pointers/0026-payment-pointers.md

Payment Pointer Syntax
Example: $example.com/bob

Payment pointers are a standardized identifier for accounts that are able to receive payments. In the same way that an email address provides an identifier for a mailbox in the email ecosystem a payment pointer is used by an account holder to share the details of their account with anyone that wishes to make a payment to them.

A payment pointer can be resolved to an “https” URL that provides the location of a payment setup service endpoint at which a sender can initiate a payment to the receiver.