Quote from: giszmo on December 27, 2013, 07:43:47 PM

What is the state of this project? I consider this or anything like this the most important improvement since Bitcoin itself as I would expect from it:

...

As the server/node part of this should be completely trust free, it could even be run by a company closed source with huge profit potential as currently every bitcoin transaction is worth $0.08US.

Your list of advantages is right, and I'm even more interested in the use of this technology to monetize other P2P services and meshnets without needing to create new currencies.

Unfortunately, I've been busy with paying work and family obligations. After the next one or two bubbles, I'm hoping to be able to quit my job and/or hire a freelancer to finish this, but I can't do that as things currently stand. I've written a prototype in case anyone with time feels like working on this in the meantime, and it's public domain and published on Github.

May I quote you on saying that this could be "the most important improvement since Bitcoin itself?" Maybe it would help me line up some resources to be able to work on this.

Quote from: giszmo on December 27, 2013, 07:43:47 PM

Quote from: blueadept on April 02, 2013, 11:24:36 PM

I think that would mean the intermediary nodes would need to register under the clarified FinCEN rules in the US.

I find this concern rather funny. One although not the only reason to give money transmitter high scrutiny is to protect users from the money transmitters spending their money. Paypal is holding gigantic amounts of money at any given moment. The point of the proposed tools here is to remove that trust completely so I would consider it worth arguing if you are a money transmitter by these laws at all. Sprint and AT&T also transmit banking messages via their networks and they also charge for transmitting these messages.

The other point is that the project proposed here is meant to be available to everybody as open source (right?) although a trust free node could be used even if only the client was open source. How will FinCEN possibly police all the kids that aptitude install a payment node to "mine" some mɃ?

Because a node accepts money in one payment channel and sends it out another, I wouldn't bet on FinCEN not seeing the running of such a node as money transmission. I have no doubt this would quickly become impossible to police, but I'm not willing to stick my neck out personally to run such a node in production in the US. I have a family to care for. Still, running a node with connections only to people you trust not to rat you out is easy enough to do without giving away your activities.