Purse To Pursue Open Source Infrastructure
Purse, the popular service allowing users to get up to a 20 percent discount on Amazon orders just for using Bitcoin, recently sent out an email detailing new updates to the website. Ranging from front-end updates for better usability and faster information updates for customers to an entirely new back-end infrastructure for the sake of resilience, discussed in detail on their blog post.
One of the first updates customers will see when using the services is new shipping states. This will allow more information to be viewed at a moment’s glance. This provides a benefit for both shoppers and earners, as better tracking information means peace of mind for the shopper and faster confirmations for earners. Coupled with a more streamlined user interface, Purse has implemented a powerful punch for an improved user experience.
Another area that Purse improved upon is their customer support. Doubling the size of their support staff with plans to increase it even further and scale accordingly with demand will assure that any problems that do occur sometimes are dealt with promptly, so ticket times are kept to a minimum to reduce any inconveniences.
Purse Instant has also been renamed to “Buy Now”. Purse’s flagship service, Buy Now retains the same instant 5 percent discount with free two day shipping from Amazon Prime on all items. On top of this, however, Buy Now users will receive the same benefits when purchasing items from partner Purse Merchants as well.
The largest update, however, is to the infrastructure, as aforementioned. In light of the recent $64 million hack on one of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges, Bitfinex, Purse will be open-sourcing their infrastructure to stand by their belief that the community must work together and move away from centralized security models.
“As a nascent industry, the community must work together. Collectively relying on centralized dependencies was a step in the wrong direction. By uniting our engineering efforts and expertise, we can work together to build resiliency by collaborating on open source infrastructure. Esoteric knowledge pertaining to securing consumer funds for Bitcoin should not be proprietary.”
As well as open-sourcing their infrastructure, Purse is continuing their efforts with ‘Bcoin’, described as “the most advanced full node bitcoin implementation.”
Utilizing Java, BCoin is the first browser-based full node. While Purse’s wallet back end will not rely on the browser-based software, the same underlying code will be utilized in efforts to secure Purse’s user funds further.
