>
> Oh yeah, credit goes to Mike Hearn for the payment channels, and if I'm
> correct, for the hub concept as well.
>

Actually, the design is from Satoshi and Matt did most of the
implementation work last year during a Google internship. Though I ended up
doing a lot of work on it too. We actually got pretty far: there was
Android UI for it and a couple of apps we coded up. I wish we could have
pushed it over the finishing line and got real world usage. Hopefully we
can return to it someday soon.

I think the hub/spoke concept was invented by goldsmiths in 16th century
Italy, as they started handing pieces of paper across their benches, or
*bancos* in Italian   :-)