Cool. I thought it would still be early enough to make non-breaking changes to the algorithm (are there allready many other implementations out there?) and didn't think you would be in favour of other flavours of the firstbits idea due to the risk of confusion that you mention.
But if you are not opposed to the idea, I think I might have a go at coding a transferable decentralised address alias. Might I push my luck and ask if you would be willing to opensource the firstbits code? Would make a really nice starting point.
But if you are not opposed to the idea, I think I might have a go at coding a transferable decentralised address alias. Might I push my luck and ask if you would be willing to opensource the firstbits code? Would make a really nice starting point.
We will post the code soon.
I don't plan to change the algorithm called firstbits at all even though there are no other implementations that I know of.
It's a neat idea (decentralized transferable aliases), but I like the purity and intuitiveness of firstbits. It would be strange to call something "firstbits" if 1mike7 returned 1jkaF92... I think you should work on your idea, but maybe find another way to encode aliases in the chain. It seems like it would be ideal to be able to pick any conforming alias and associate it with your address via some transaction. Then the rule would be the first to make a valid claiming tx gets the requested alias.
A (probably bad) example would be send 11 satoshis to an address then send any amount within 100 blocks and that amount is your alias. You could convert the number to whatever base is all lowercase or lowercase and numbers or whatever. If anyone ever tried to make the same claim it would just be ignored, only the first would count.
To be clear, I am in favor of other people making other systems, just not calling them firstbits. Anything calling itself firstbits should use our exact algorithm and opening the code will help people do that.