This was one of the most exciting projects in the bitcoin space a couple of years ago then it just died.
http://www.othercoin.com/OtherCoin.pdfOtherCoin is an off-chain Bitcoin payment system based on a tamper-resistant smartcard in microSD form factor. OtherCoin works by securely generating, storing and transmitting Bitcoin private keys between parties. Private keys are never revealed to either the sender or the receiver, they can either be used directly in the Bitcoin protocol to sign transactions or securely transmitted to another OtherCoin user. Each OtherCoin smartcard guarantees that the key has either been securely generated by itself or has been received over a secure channel from a similar OtherCoin, with the same restrictions.
I haven't heard anyone talk about it in ages. I think it was a little before it's time. Bitcoin hadn't run into its scaling issues yet and hadn't become generally well known yet either. But maybe it's time has come?
FP specifically has put forward the idea of attacking scaling at all levels and it seems to me that this is a potentially very practical and powerful scaling vector. Additionally it would make many of moneros transactions entirely off chain. This has great implications for privacy. With our funding model we could probably raise the funds necessary to fund the development of some sort of open source application specific hardware device for this sort of thing if a knowledgeable hardware guy were to avail himself.
Mostly I just thought it would be cool if I could kick off a discussion about this proposal. Get it back in the public consciousness. More specifically into the Monero community consciousness. What are your thoughts dear reader?
Bump I guess since no one seemed to have noticed it last time. This particular way of scaling at the low end could be a HUGE part of the solution to scaling.
