LOGGING-IN with BITCOIN( a guide to life without email based registrations and paywalls )

A DEVELOPER WITHOUT CHOICE IS AN UNHAPPY DEVELOPER

WHY SHOULD WEB DEVELOPERS CAREABOUT BITCOIN…?

BITCOIN SUCKS914,000 RESULTS

https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoin+sucks

BITCOIN ROCKS58,800,000 RESULTS

https://www.google.com/search?q=bitcoin+rocks

64 TIMES AS GOOD AS ITS NOT( according to Google – Nov 2013 )

WHO AM I TO TELL YOU…?Mark Smalley – http://twitter.com/m_smalley

R1 DOT MY Sdn Bhd – http://r1.my

Been Living in Malaysia for 16 Years

Developing Web-Applications for 15 Years

MongoDB Master / NoSQL Specialist

Passion for Community Management

Family Involved with Equity Fund Management

WE ALREADY HAVE CHOICE – WE EVEN HAVE PAYPAL

• Square, Stripe, V.me, Simple, etc …

• Only available to developers in States / Europe

• Local alternatives are complicated, costly & useless

• No options for instant starts …

• No options for anonymity or the billions of us unbanked

• In Malaysia we only have PayPal and iPay88

BITCOIN THE TECHNOLOGY STACK

• Uses LevelDB to access (via JSON) a globally distributed public ledger of all transactions

• Send and receive payments instantly and directly via JSON-RPC calls from any server-side language …

• Existing wrappers, frameworks, documentation, libraries and support for PHP, Ruby, NodeJS

• Still in Beta (0.8) with Market Cap of US$12.8 Billion (Nov 2013)

• Version 0.9 to bring payment requests and receipts!

THE POWER OF DISTRIBUTED LEDGERS

• Removes central point of control (and failure)

– For developers this means an ALWAYS on API

• Can be used for things other than transactions

– For developers this means timestamps and cookies

• Provides a public record and optional anonymity

– For developers this means instant sign-up without verification

LET’S BUILD SOMETHING – LOGIN WITHOUT EMAIL

Before we begin, let’s ask why do such a crazy thing…?

• We do not need to manage our own database!

• We can integrate sign-up and payment as one process

• We do not force our users to provide their identity

• Nobody needs to sign-up or apply for accounts

• We can do business globally with anyone who has internet

JUMPING INTO CODE :: TABLE OF CONTENTShttps://github.com/msmalley/BCE/tree/master/php-login

// Include BTC login class

$login = new mongobase_btc_login();

// Get user information

$user = $login->user();

// Check if user is logged-in or not...?

$logged_in = $login->logged_in($user['uid']);

// Create and display relevant HTML

$html = $login->html($logged_in, $user['address']);

echo $html;

PART ONE – GET USER INFO$user = $login->user();

// Check if got existing UID cookie if(isset($_COOKIE[$cookie_name]))

{

$uid = $_COOKIE[$cookie_name];

// Get existing BTC address

$addresses = $this::$btc->query(array(

'function‘ => 'getaddressesbyaccount',

'options‘ => $cookie_name.'_'.$uid

));

$address = $addresses[0];

}

PART ONE – GET USER INFO (continued)$user = $login->user();

// Else create a new UID cookie

}else{

// Gather server settings

$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];

$user_time = $_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'];

// Generate unique ID

$uid = hash('sha256',$user_salt.$user_agent.$user_time);

// Set UID cookie

setcookie($cookie_name, $uid, time() + $cookie_life);

// Create new BTC address

$address = $this::$btc->query(array(

'function‘ => 'getnewaddress',

'options‘ => $cookie_name.'_'.$uid

));

}

PART TWO – CHECK IF LOGGED-IN$logged_in = $login->logged_in($user['uid']);

// Not by default

$logged_in = false;

// Check if got balance

$uid_balance = $this::$btc->query(array(

'function’ => 'getbalance',

'options’ => $cookie_name.'_'.$uid

));

// Check if logged-in

$details = $this->timed_cookies();

$logged_in = $details['logged_in'];

if(!$logged_in && $uid_balance > 0)

{

// Not logged-in but got transactions

$logged_in = $this->set_cookies();

}

return $logged_in;

PART TWO – CHECK IF LOGGED-IN (continued)$details = $this->timed_cookies(); // excluding sanity checks

foreach($_COOKIE as $key => $value){ $key_array = explode('_', $key); if(count($key_array) == 2 && $key_array[0] == $cookie_name) { $temp_uid = $key_array[1]; $txid = $_COOKIE[$cookie_name.'_'.$temp_uid]; $transactions = $this::$btc->query(array( 'function'=>'listtransactions', 'options'=>$cookie_name.'_'.$temp_uid )); foreach($transactions as $transaction) { $hashed_id = hash('sha256', $txid_salt.$transaction['txid']); if($hashed_id == $txid) { $uid = $temp_uid; $address = $this::$btc->query(array( 'function'=>'getaddressesbyaccount', 'options'=>$cookie_name.'_'.$uid )); $logged_in = true; } } }}

PART TWO – CHECK IF LOGGED-IN (continued)$logged_in = $this->set_cookies(); // excluding sanity checks

$logged_in = false;

$recent_transactions = $this::$btc->query(array(

'function'=>'listtransactions',

'options'=>$cookie_name.'_'.$uid

));

$txid = $recent_transactions[0]['txid'];

$amount = $recent_transactions[0]['amount'];

if($amount > 0)

{

$logged_in = true;

$number_of_days_bought = $amount / $btc_per_day;

$new_cookie_life = 86400 * $number_of_days_bought;

// Manage Cookies

$id = hash('sha256',$txid_salt.$txid),;

setcookie($cookie_name.'_'.$uid, $id, time() + $new_cookie_life);

setcookie($this::$cookie_name, false, time() - 1);

}

return $logged_in;

Source Code: https://github.com/msmalley/BCE/tree/master/php-login

HAPPY-HACKING

THANKS FOR LISTENINGLEARN MORE - @m_smalley