[GNUnet-SVN] [taler-exchange] branch master updated (164614a -> 93488a8)

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dold pushed a change to branch master
in repository exchange.

    from 164614a  Merge branch 'master' of ssh://taler.net/exchange
     new bdc79b5  draft for implementation section
     new 93488a8  typo

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Summary of changes:
 doc/paper/taler.tex | 46 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 44 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/doc/paper/taler.tex b/doc/paper/taler.tex
index 35eacd2..a795854 100644
--- a/doc/paper/taler.tex
+++ b/doc/paper/taler.tex
@@ -1447,8 +1447,50 @@ customer owns, only the original customer can use the 
increased balance.
 
 
 \section{Implementation}
-
-\begin{figure}
+We implemented the Taler protocol in the context of a payment system for the
+Web, as shown in Figure~\ref{fig:taler-arch}.  The system was designed for 
real-world usage with
+current Web technology and the within the existing financial system.
+
+By instructing their bank to send money to an exchange, the customer creates a
+(non-anonymous) balance, called a \emph{reserve}, at the exchange.  The
+customer can subsequently withdraw coins from this \emph{reserve} into their
+\emph{wallet}, which stores and manages coins.  The \emph{wallet} was
+implemented as a cross-browser extension, available for a majority of widely
+used browsers.
+
+Upon withdrawal of coins from the exchange, the user authenticates themselves
+using an Ed25519 private key, where the corresponding public key needs to be
+included in the payment instruction from the customer's bank to the exchange's
+bank.  With a bank that directly supports Taler on their online banking 
website,
+this process is streamlined for the user, since the wallet automatically
+creates the key pair for the reserve and adds the public key to the
+payment instruction.
+
+While browsing a merchant's website, the website can signal the wallet to
+request a payment from a user.  The user is then asked to confirm or reject
+this proposal.  The merchant deposits coins received from the customer's wallet
+at the exchange.  Since bank transfers are usually costly, the exchange
+aggregates multiple deposits into a bigger, delayed transaction.  This allows
+our system to be used even for microtransactions of amounts smaller than
+usually handled by the existing financial system.
+
+As shown in Figure~\ref{fig:taler-arch}, the merchant is internally split into
+multiple components.  The implementation of the Taler prococol and
+cryptographic operations is isolated into a separate component (called the
+\emph{merchant backend}), which the merchant accesses through an API or 
Software
+Development Kit (SDK) of their choice.
+
+Our implementation of the exchange and merchant backend is written in C and
+uses PostgreSQL as a database and libgcrypt for cryptographic operations.
+The demo merchants and example bank with tight Taler integration are written 
in Python.
+The browser extension is written in TypeScript against the cross-browser
+WebExtension API.
+
+The code is available at \url{https://git.taler.net} and a demo
+is available at \url{https://demo.taler.net}.
+
+
+\begin{figure}\label{fig:taler-arch}
   \includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{taler-arch-full.pdf}
   \caption{The different components of the Taler system in the
     context of a banking system providing money creation,

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