Burner wallets: the average user’s solution to purchasing coffee (or beer) with crypto?
If you haven’t had a chance to meet with developers in the wild, while they showcase their projects, it is highly suggested you do so. On January 9th, an Ethereum Boulder (ETH Boulder) meetup at Galvanize brought together developers, investors, and the intrigued alike.
The ETH Boulder meetups “talk all things Ethereum and Blockchain,” where developers, entrepreneurs, and inquisitive minds are welcome.
The presenter, Austin Griffith, showcased a burner wallet where a quick, discardable, and easy-to-use web wallet is created through the use of locally generated keys. The presentation contained tidbits of information gained from project to project as Griffith showed the attendee’s his development path through the ecosystem.
Following the presentation, the group went to a local watering hole, where the Griffith essentially bought everyone a round of beer to user test creating a wallet, and sending funds to pay for the beer. After ordering a beer, we sent funds to the bartender’s address directly from our newly created burner wallets. On the other side of the counter, an iPad displayed when each transaction had gone through.
Transactions generally took ~5s.
The bartender was in on the action; patient, yet diligent, to verify that transactions occurred for each beer we purchased. Adamant to make the transactions work, despite the inevitable issues that arose with the various folks testing a new product.
Ah, product testing.
The burner wallet uses a sidechain to Ethereum as a location to store the transactions and maintain the necessary accounting information. By doing this, the user doesn’t need to spend any ETH to send a transaction, the sidechain (and its owner) eat those costs.
After taking the first sip of the Odell’s 90 Shilling Ale just purchased with a burner wallet and crypto, I thought to myself, this sure feels a lot like blockchain is getting closer to the “buying coffee (or beer) with Bitcoin” metric.
Special thanks to crypto enthusiast and community organizer, Dan Shields, who was on hand to record the event and upload the feed.
Learn more about what Austin is creating by checking out his website (https://austingriffith.com/) or following his work at Gitcoin (https://gitcoin.co/).
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