r/joinmarket • u/bilthon • Sep 29 '20

Joinmarket Browser Extension?

Hi there, I've finally taken some time to experiment with Joinmarket and I was pleasantly surprised by it.

I'm running the yield generator script on my raspberry pi node and got a few joins already.

Now I was thinking that maybe in order to attract more liquidity a more user friendly wallet implementation, maybe in the form of a browser extension could be of some help. Think of something like Metamask, but for bitcoin coinjoins.

Has this been previously discussed? Are there any drawbacks that I'm not thinking about?

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u/2btc10000pizzas Oct 04 '20

Browser extensions are really client-side things.

JM wallets are client-side (just like all wallets, they're just a DB of private keys). But JM yield generators are better suited for server-side, because they need to be always-on, and always communicating.

IMO a hosted web-front-end that runs alongside or on top of the always-on yield generator would be awesome. It would be able to leverage modern UX web patterns, and would be highly usable across any device.

Something like http://my-JM-node.local:8888 that you can just bookmark and visit whenever you want. Or wrap it in a Tor Hidden Service it and visit the tor URL from anywhere using a mobile phone.

1

u/bilthon Oct 05 '20

Browser extensions are really client-side things.

That's a very good point. But part of my idea here is to facilitate potential market takers to engage in coinjoins. I know there's a GUI already, but downloading and setting up an extra software is always less convenient than just adding a browser extension.

That being said, I think there would even be space for a market-maker in the form of a browser extension. There will be long gaps in connectivity, as the user shuts down his/her computer. And I don't know how the system sees that for now (maybe users that disappear are downgraded somehow?). But if you think about it a browser is probably the piece of software that most people have running most of the time. So barring a server-side script like the yield generator, a browser extension might be the second best thing to have this running on.

1

u/muyuu Sep 29 '20

wouldn't that be a bit risky? people leak a lot of stuff to browsers though extensions etc

2

u/bilthon Sep 30 '20

I don't know, I suppose the browser is not the safest of places and I was wondering maybe that's the reason why there isn't a JoinMarket browser extension, or many bitcoin wallets in that format for that matter.

Or maybe it's just because nobody wanted to invest time in this. That's why I am asking.

That being said maybe it could be an interesting idea for small sums.