Cody Wilson, most famous as the guy who invented a gun that can be made with a 3D printer, has offered but a handful of clues into his new project, Dark Wallet.
The basics of the project are this: Dark Wallet will be a Bitcoin wallet that will work as a browser plug-in. This will make it easy for non-technical users and presumably facilitate wider adoption of the currency.
In a New Yorker piece on the project, Michael Del Castillo writes that this resonates with Wilson’s previous efforts with 3D gun printing: Using technology to eliminate government intervention from people’s private lives.
Thus, an easy-to-use plugin for Chrome or Firefox should make Bitcoin spending easier for people not ready to adopt QR codes or long chains of randomly generated characters.
Perhaps one problem Dark Wallet could also try to solve is helping people initially get Bitcoins in the first place. For the non-technical, this is possibly the biggest hurdle.
Perhaps, too, another hurdle for Dark Wallet itself is the stances Wilson has taken. From the New Yorker piece:
“The public faces of Bitcoin are acting as counter-revolutionaries. They’re actively working to try to diffuse it, and to pollute it.”
A lot of users, I don’t think, will be interested in Bitcoin as a means to subvert tax collection or regulation. I think they’ll just be excited about quick money transfers, price speculation and diversifying their financial holdings.
So far, Wilson and project co-founder Amir Taaki have tentatively guessed Dark Wallet could be available by January or February.