Paymail

Paymail is a practical implementation of the family of related protocols collectively referred to as BSVAlias. In brief, it is an identity protocol that removes Bitcoin addresses from the user experience. Instead of addresses, Paymail uses human-readable names that look exactly the same as email addresses. Paymails are much easier to type into a device than Bitcoin addresses and can be used to identify an individual via the Paymail identifier.

The protocol describes a procedure where a wallet provider will be able to be discovered and contacted, and can respond to payments and payment requests in real time so that payment receivers don’t have to re-use their Bitcoin addresses, thereby maintaining privacy.

As a simplified example, in order for Alice to send some bitcoin to Bob, Alice sends the payment to [email protected]. The paymail protocol implemented by Bob's wallet will provide a Bitcoin script to pay to for the actual Bitcoin transaction creation rather than relying on the concept of the Bitcoin address which is actually just a compact encoding of a script, but limits the form of the script to one particular type. This is done behind the user experience. Note that the security will rely on a public key infrastructure.

At the time of writing, the protocols cover:

  • BRFC Specifications
  • Service Discovery
  • Public Key Infrastructure
  • Payment Addressing

For more information visit the BSVAlias website.

An implementation of these protocols can be used for access delegation in a similar fashion to 0auth.

Paymail is the name for the implementation of the following protocols:

  • Service Discovery
  • Public Key Infrastructure
  • Basic Address Resolution from the Payment Addressing protocol group

The Paymail brand is reserved for products and services that, at a minimum, implement each of the above protocols.

Moneybutton has published content describing Paymail and why it is needed here