FR - Add the support for transaction messages/comments/memos with onchain metadata (CIP-0020)

[gitmachtl]

@PeterBenc any chance to see a comment/description/memo field in adalite that uses the metadata messaging from CIP-0020 ?
https://github.com/cardano-foundation/CIPs/blob/a39c12079f031da9cf20f58f355d45545072e002/CIP-0020/CIP-0020.md

CardanoCommunityWallet and other tools implemented it already.

[MichalPetro]

Do you mean to implement the possibility to add data to this field or just to display if this data is present in transaction in transaction history? Do you see some strong use cases for this? Why not just use cardanoscan to see this data?

[gitmachtl]

Both of them, Yoroi for example has a MEMO field, but only usage is for internal memos. The transaction message is something other blockchains have implemented. We have the code for that since the Allegra fork. Its a method to just send additional information along with your transaction, like your invoice-number for example when you pay for something. I guess you don't make fiat bank transfers for invoices without any additional data in it (invoice-no, customer-no, etc.). Its the same with crypto transactions. When you are the receiver, it helps you to see what the incoming transactions are for. As a sender, you see in your history what the payment was for. We need this little addon to make it more mainstream imo. Why not cardanoscan? Yes, cardanoscan shows the data, but we are talking normal users here. You want that information in your wallet, not on a platform somewhere else. When you are a company f.e. , and you look at your fiat bank account, you see an incoming transfer with the invoice-no for example, you don't want to just see +$125,00 and than you have to guess what that amount was for, who sent it, etc by reaching out to a special banking website.

So, as Adalite is always at the forefront, it would be nice to see that implemented. The message/comment/memo should be displayed as an additional info right beside the transaction history, as a dropdown, as a field, etc. There is no need for all tools to support multiline input fields, if you just implement a single comment line, that would be cool too for the start. But the possibilities for the normal users are big. Others can even build automated reactions to transactions like that including this little metadata json addon, like automated emails "thx, we received your payment for invoice-no xxxxx".

Adalite has the catalyst voting implemented, thats way more complicated than this feature. So i guess it would be pretty easy for you guys to come up with a small and fast solution for that. 😄

[MichalPetro]

It would be fairly easy to implement for mnemonic wallets but unfortunately, most of our users are using HW wallets and this feature is not supported by HW wallets. Current conditions are that our HW wallets team is overutilized and we don't have the capacity to add additional features to HW wallets firmware in the following months, especially if these features are not endorsed by IOHK. That being said - it doesn't make much sense for me to implement this feature to AdaLite at this time because we have more priority work to do. But I will try to raise this topic to IOHK and try to add this feature to the HW roadmap.

This doesn't mean I do not like this feature (I like it very much) but our focus on HW wallet users determines our priorities.

[gitmachtl]

Why do you think it is not supported by HW-Wallets? Its is just an attached metadata.json information. We can send them also with HW-Wallets. There is no need to decode the metadata.json and display it on the HW-Wallet, its just normal additional auxiliary metadata. That works like a charm also with HW-Wallets.

[codeiqrepo]

please

[refi93]

@MichalPetro this feature indeed doesn't require hw wallet support beyond generic metadata to work as it doesnt require assembling the metadata by the hw wallet (no signature of the payload within the metadata as opposed to Catalyst).

Given there's not the main blocker due to which it was originally closed I'm reopening this issue to continue the discussion

[MichalPetro]

Thanks for the clarification. I that case we may consider implementing it although I am not sure when we will have resources available for this.

[gitmachtl]

Thank you very much, also added some additional implementation thoughts into the CIP. Like hiding the comment first under a "show unmoderated comment" button/drop-down like on the cardano explorer. Or to autoremove/autodelete urls, or really limit the character space to a handful of chars to prevent url/html code inception for example.

[gitmachtl]

CIP-0020 has been approved and merged into master