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87 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
87 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
```
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bLIP: 0011
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Title: NameDesc
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Status: Active
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Author: Hampus Sjöberg <hampus.sjoberg@protonmail.com>
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Created: 2022-01-27
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License: CC0
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```
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## Abstract
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NameDesc is a standard for conveying "receiver name" in BOLT11 invoices.
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This bLIP serves to document what is already supported by some wallets (see
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[Reference Implementations](#reference-implementations)), for posterity and so
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that new implementations don't have to reverse-engineer general-purpose NameDesc
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from existing implementations.
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## Copyright
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This bLIP is licensed under the CC0 license.
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## Motivation
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BOLT11 lets you include a description of an invoice. This is widely used across
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the ecosystem, however there's no coherent or conventional way to write an
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invoice description.
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NameDesc provides a clear way on how to structure an invoice description that is
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helpful for the user and which the wallet software can parse.
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It specifies how the name of the receiver should be presented, something which
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isn't always included. Not including the receiver name can lead to a transaction
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log item only showing an ID or product name, but not the actual service or
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store.
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NameDesc is intentionally simplistic in order to make it easy for wallets and
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services to adopt it. It also provides a very good experience should a wallet
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not support reading NameDesc.
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## Specification
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NameDesc consists in prepending the actual invoice description with the receiver
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name, a colon and two spaces (`: `).
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For example, Alfred's wallet can produce an invoice with the following
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description:
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```
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Alfred: payment for the bubblegum you owed me
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```
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When Barbara's wallet receives that, it displays something like:
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```
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Paying to: Alfred
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Description: payment for the bubblegum you owed me
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```
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## Rationale
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NameDesc paves a way for a more structured and standardised way of writing
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invoices descriptions. Wallets that do not support NameDesc will still have a
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graceful fallback, as they will show:
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```
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Description: Alfred: payment for the bubblegum you owed me
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```
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And if the payee's wallet doesn't support including a "Name", Alfred can still
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manually type his name in the description field. Not the best experience in the
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world, but doable.
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## Universality
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NameDesc lives in the application layer. It is not necessary for a lightning
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implementation to support/insert what the bLIP does here.
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## Backwards Compatibility
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This does not have backwards compatibility concerns.
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## Reference Implementations
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* Blixt Wallet: <https://github.com/hsjoberg/blixt-wallet/commit/e0ab93fdbaa92ec56bf920803bae22bf9108dfc4>
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* lntxbot: <https://github.com/fiatjaf/lntxbot/commit/3bde760066ad5ae20e0672a53cdbd910f14d7149>
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