B-Mo! (Bitcoin-Venmo)

B-Mo! Front End - Send Bitcoin using email address

Github Repo: [https://github.com/jchai002/b-mo.git]

Inspiration

For San Francisco/Silicon Valley techies, using technology and understanding advanced math and computer concepts can be second nature. But for those outside the tech "bubble", Bitcoin, with its advanced technical concepts (hashing, public keys, private keys, linked list of transaction blocks, etc.) will likely remain out of reach - highly discouraging Bitcoin/cryptocurrency adoption.

To solve this problem we invented B-Mo! - Venmo for Bitcoin!

By expanding the sheer base of Bitcoin users, via a simple UI and email-only payment interface, we believe the entire ecosystem of Bitcoin-related vendors, including Purse.io, will benefit and see user growth drive upwards.

What it does

Using the BCoin and BPanel, we created an interface into the underlying Bitcoin network to allow users to send Bitcoin payments using only email addresses. Our solution will store all your Bitcoin friends, their Bitcoin public key addresses and their email addresses into one address book. Then, by entering only a friend's email address (not public key) into our easy to use web application, you can send him/her Bitcoins.

By eliminating the need to understand and use the public/private key paradigm that underlies the Bitcoin network, we have greatly expanded the addressable market of the existing 40m+ Bitcoin users to potentially a billion+ users.

How I built it

We built our BPanel (powered by BCoin's Bitcoin node)using React for the front end and Nodejs/Express and mongoDB on the backend. By using BCoin simple to use APIs, we were easily able to create send transactions over the Bitcoin network, and listen for events (such as a successful transaction with multiple confirmations).

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Getting a working prototype built in under 48 hours!

What I learned

We learned how to interface with Bcoin's APIs and create a highly customized BPanel. Key technical issues we resolved include using BCoin's web socket interface to listen to relevant transaction events on our webapp, having those events propagate thru correctly to our BPanel Webapp and using/understanding the BPanel server/client architecture in general.