Litecoin: Litecoin improvement proposal - Creating a web wallet

[PWKad]

TL:DR

The wallet released with litecoin core (and of course bitcoin) is due for an upgrade. Currently the wallet is very outdated and redesign has been proposed.

The proposal shows some modern design techniques which will be difficult to implement in the existing wallet. This proposal outlines an updated web-based wallet running on top of the node. Long term this would be hopefully a proposal to make back to Bitcoin core to replace the existing wallet but for now assume this is ancillary to core.

Front-end

The wallet will be written in modern JavaScript and HTML with SASS for the styling. Initially this will be written with Aurelia (a JavaScript framework) for speed of development and because it is most spec compliant and would be easiest to port to any other framework or back to vanilla.js. Also because I know a large community of developers would are able to support this endeavor.

Mid-tier

To handle abstracting out interactions with the node a simple node.js API can be used to proxy requests to the node. This should speed up development as well. I'm fairly lenient on this portion of the proposal.

Timeline / Milestones

1. Design - design assets created - done
2. Develop - develop working proof of concept - in progress ~ complete by December 1 2017
3. Review / Approval of functionality by Litecoin core maintainers
4. Develop - Start to Productionize the wallet
5. Submit a production-ready PR
6. Submit a proposal back to Bitcoin core for the same wallet

Requirements

• Internationalization support (ex. English / Spanish)
• Accessible (ex. Screen reader friendly)
• ?

Feedback welcome, and if this is the wrong place to open a discussion like this or if this doesn't seem like a proposal that makes sense please feel free to close this out.

[PWKad]

Instead of responding with support that they would support this project from a development standpoint (questions, code contributions, etc...) I'm asking the Aurelia core team and community members to add the :hooray: reaction or plus one it to show support.

[coblee]

Have you seen this? https://medium.com/litecoin-foundation/redesigning-litecoin-core-with-lightning-capabilities-3a8ebbea590a

[PWKad]

@coblee Yes I actually linked that in the first sentence of my proposal as the design work.

[coblee]

Haha, my bad! I like the idea of a web-based UI for the wallet functionality. Thanks for helping out!

[TylerJPresley]

I'd love to contribute somehow to this.

[PWKad]

@TylerJPresley and anyone else who is interested in contributing, proof of concept checklist - https://github.com/PWKad/litecoin-core-wallet/issues/2

[vkoskiv]

I would like to get someone more knowledgeable to comment on the security risks of running a node.js based frontend for a crypto wallet.
I'm no expert, but there is a history of malicious packages on NPM.

Is there more specific reasoning why the UI overhaul cannot be performed using QT?

[sriramgopal]

Hi,

I have an interesting idea for Litecoin. How can I bring this to the attention of devs?

[vkoskiv]

@sriramgopal Open a new issue.

[sriramgopal]

@VKoskiv It is not a technical idea. It's more of a business model and I'm unsure if I can post such stuff here.

[PWKad]

@VKoskiv sorry for not responding earlier, if someone is willing and experienced to make the updates in QT I think that would be good as well. Personally my opinion is that front-end development has progressed well past what QT offers and JavaScript is my primary language so it's a natural fit.