It seems to me that there should be a low level tool with core
functionality well factored, which many higher level tools can access
-- dark wallet, sx (or something commandline-ish like it but more
elaborate), eventually electrum, and others.

Example of low level function:

-- Gather unspent inputs for a single public address
-- Gather all transactions for a public address (whether spent or
unspent). Aka history
-- Generate key(s) given a seed (electrum style or bip32)


Example of high level function

-- Generate a transaction, including change handling and whatever
identity mangling / obfuscation properties are wanted
-- Connect with outside accounting packages


Balance (whether of single address or an account) seems more like a
high level than low level feature. Although in this case it's somewhat
a question of taste.

I'm trying to separate out the layers, sharing thoughts/ideas (as tphyahoo) at

https://github.com/spesmilo/sx/issues?state=open

I favor keeping everything command line (sx style) during the
prototyping stage. When the following is true

-- enough basic building blocks work on the command line
-- many building blocks are also working as c stubs easily accessible
from other systems

we can start building things on top of sx/libbitcoin using higher
level languages like python/chrome extensions like darkwallet, etc
(ideally I'm hoping to do something in smalltalk). But the higher
level tools would share a common core functionality, which will save
everyone time; and also win mindshare for libbitcoin.

I am hoping common reference implementation can share some components
such as key/seed/utxos databases, but I am still thinking that
through.





On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 2:06 PM, Amir Taaki <genjix@???> wrote:
> I think this should be a layer above in a separate tool(s).
>
> Maybe bash scripts which use the on-disk filesystem to organize keys,
> provide encryption .etc Then you can even have a wallet with a menu to
> perform actions which works by decrypting and piping keys to different
> tools.
>
> On 08/01/14 18:41, Thomas Hartman wrote:
>> I think what is really wanted is the notion of an account.
>>
>> You want to know the balance of an account, where an account could be
>> defined various ways
>> -- a single address
>> -- a group of addresses
>> -- a group of addresses under a deterministic public key(s)
>> -- some arbitrary collection of unspent transaction outputs
>> -- just something with a name, and no addresses/inputs associated with it yet
>>
>> I think if we get the notion (or notions) of account right, the
>> balance logic is easy.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 8, 2014 at 2:44 AM, Amir Taaki <genjix@???> wrote:
>>> sx history implements this, by allowing you to pass multiple arguments
>>> in on the command line. I would simply copy this code over to
>>> sx-balance. Feel free to just commit it straight to the repo.
>>>
>>> https://github.com/spesmilo/sx/blob/master/src/history.cpp
>>>
>>> On 08/01/14 10:30, Grazcoin wrote:
>>>>
>>>> sx balance shows the balance of a single Bitcoin address, and I would
>>>> like to enable multiple addresses:
>>>> https://github.com/spesmilo/sx/issues/34
>>>>
>>>> Any suggestions on how to implement it? I have noticed that
>>>> https://github.com/spesmilo/sx/blob/master/src/balance.cpp implements it
>>>> using history fetch of the address. Would it require a modification on
>>>> the obelisk side?
>>>>
>>>> Grazcoin
>>>>
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