I didnt think there was a chance to find bitcoind in Java form that jean-luc would consider adding to NXT core.
Why would you need/want that rather than just doing RPC commands to a "real bitcoind"?
It is MUCH simpler to solve the issues with a hardcoded NXTplugin since we dont have to deal with Evil Bob changing the executable. Not having to worry about Evil Bob seemed prudent for the first attempt at adding parsing of AM data to see what plugins to call, etc.
You are *always* going to have Evil Bob using the "wrong plugin" and *you will not be able to tell* especially if your plugin has no way to be verified (which was the point about an SMTP plugin).
If we cant solve the issue with simple hardcoded plugin, no chance for complex external plugin. That is why I chose email as the proof of concept.
Exactly my concern - a plugin that issues a "bitcoind" RPC command (hell - why not just use "blockchain.info" for that matter) is at least *verifiable* in that given x servers running the "supposedly same" plugin you would get the exact same result from all of them (if they are able to give a result at all that is).
If you want a "dead simple" plugin then how about one that just does this:
return "hello";
I think we can verify the checksum of the running code for plugin matches the source code. Similar to signing of .jar files
The problem of using blockchain.info is that it is a website and that opens it up to all the problems of websites being hacked. It seemed a lot more secure to be able to verify that bitcoind running matches the bitcoind source code.
I couldn't justify paying a bounty for a program that returned "hello"
We need more people familiar with the NXT core. I wanted simple enough project that had some utility that would get people to see how easy it is to add functionality to NXT