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# System prepended metadata

title: BIP21 / Labels

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# BIP21 / Labels

Johns Beharry Apr 20th at 8:42 PM
BIP21 states that the label field is for the receivers name. Most people don’t use this field as such.
So usually what ends up going there is the senders name (or the purpose of the payment) because as a receiver I care more about my own record keeping than the senders.
Also, if the receivers name it to be entered in the label field, then why isn’t it autofilled? (edited) 
Screenshot 2021-04-20 at 20.41.22.png 
Screenshot 2021-04-20 at 20.41.22.png


![](https://i.imgur.com/02bOe9C.png)




13 replies

Johns Beharry  21 days ago
cc @bosch @Dan Gould @Ed Pratt

Dan Gould  21 days ago
could be autofilled, sure. if people arent already using it this way it would be pretty easy to substitute label= for receiver=.

Johns Beharry  21 days ago
well, i don’t know why it wasn’t so to begin with. i’ll do some digging sometime else. i’ve also made the mistake to say the senders name is what the label should be.

Johns Beharry  21 days ago
most times when label gets presented in a form, it feels very much like — im doing this for me.

Christoph Ono  20 days ago
“name of receiver” is just given as an example, not as a targeted use case.
image.png 
image.png
![](https://i.imgur.com/jwWiw2k.png)



Christoph Ono  20 days ago
Would be good to come up with recommendations on these fields based on a well thought out user experience.

bosch  20 days ago
What would it be auto filled with? Wouldn’t it make more sense for users to manually enter it?

The word label seems a bit abstract, maybe something like Payee and instead of message have description? This is more analogues to banking from my experience. I’ll get back to this after some more research

Christoph Ono  20 days ago
I think the confusion stems from whether you are using the field for your own needs (noting who you’re requesting money from) vs the need of the person you’re sending the request (they want to track who is asking them for money).

Christoph Ono  20 days ago
Email has clear “to” and “from” labels, for that reason.

Ed Pratt  20 days ago
@Johns Beharry I presume you're referring to the difference between inbound and outbound labels. If you enter your name as the label when receiving, you're essentially self-labelling the payment output. Doesn't it seem to make more sense to know where the payment has come from? I.e using the label to remind you who the previous owner of the coin was...
@bosch I also tend to agree re the language label + message. Payee + payment description sounds more appropriate. Although, are message fields public? Or just between the sender + receiver?

Ed Pratt  20 days ago
That BIP21 description seems to make sense for outgoing transactions but not so much for incoming ones. Am I missing something?

bosch  20 days ago
It's only shown to whoever you share your payment request too
:+1:
1


Christoph Ono  20 days ago
Yep. Invoice creation vs. book keeping (of completed transactions). Different use cases, not clearly defined in wallets.