Proposal: Light Ethereum Wallet with low transaction fees

Dear Steemians -

This post is a product proposal that I hope will receive meaningful feedback. Please beat this up as much as possible - I'd rather not bring it to life than have it not do well after investing time, money & lots of effort.

Product: Light Ethereum wallet with low transaction fees.

Ethereum is seeing upwards of 500,000 transactions a month. The average transaction fee in October-2017 was ~$0.20. Offering a wallet with an intuitive, attractive UX on all major platforms enables those not inclined to run full nodes on the client side, especially on mobile devices. The major differentiator of this proposal is guaranteed low-cost transaction processing in the same time as that of transactions with higher fees.

Here's how it can be achieved:

The figure shows a light wallet routing transaction requests to preferred ethereum nodes via a gateway - ones preconfigured with 50%(??) of the median transaction fees, maybe hosted by the same entity offering the light wallet. Preferring certain nodes drastically increases the chances of the transaction competing at lower costs than routing through the network at random, while incentivising the preferred nodes to continue offering low fees by preferring them. The figure shows the gateway routing to a set of 3 preconfigured nodes - the minimum required by the ethereum network to confirm a transaction.

Business Plan

The profitability of the business depends on attracting as many transactions as possible. Incentive shifts towards transaction mining versus coinbase mining. Marketing and network effects can propel this to success, as transaction volumes need to reach certain (high) thresholds to offset mining costs.

Why this product needs to exist

Many of you own Steem or other crypto currencies. Today (November 2017), your practical options to liquidate constitute converting them to Bitcoin & further converting Bitcoin to fiat, or spending Bitcoin in (few) marketplaces that accept it. Bitcoin's transaction fees are prohibitively expensive, about $6 on average in November 2017. This has made Bitcoin more of an asset than a currency, contrary to Nakamoto's founding goals. Marchants & consumers alike prefer fiat for everyday purchases, unless they require anonymity for particular reasons.

Ethereum has proven itself at high transaction volumes & much lower fees. However, miners for ethereum aren't focused on lowering costs - if we can collectively lower fees, ethereum can quickly become a viable currency v.s. an asset (it's primary use today), as increased transactability reduces volatility. While steem & eos promise almost zero transaction fees, they are still not as widely used and accepted as ethereum. Hence, this product needs to exist for the immediate and medium term future, until a true low cost crypto currency becomes a practical, widely accepted & used alternative.

What the community can do

1. Poke holes in any assumptions or expose technical errors in this proposal. Work together to mend, refine it.
2. Vote to show interest & encourage the developers to bring this to life.

Here's hoping for meaningful feedback - positive or negative.

Cheers.