Recent events made me realize that we really need to do this. Binding development of the core network infrastructure to development of a wallet gives people the wrong impression.

Also it gets us all kinds of end user concerns and bike-shedding in this project, which distracts from core infrastructure work.

What concretely needs to be done here? At least

1. Factor out parts needed by both the bitcoind and the wallet into a library (basically the current libbitcoin_common + libbitcoin_server).
   • Install .h files and .a/.so files in a way that they can be used by another project
   • Create a new project on github for this library? Or just build it as part of this repository for now?
2. Create a new project on github under bitcoin, bitcoin-core-wallet, move the wallet specific parts to here (libbitcoin_wallet, wallet specific tests, wallet GUI code). This project uses the aforementioned library.
3. The wallet should be able to work as SPV client, at least with a trusted bitcoind instance. Headers-first is a move in this direction.
4. Wallet GUI should be changed to be able to launch a bitcoind process in the background (an option which defaults to on) and stop it when shutting down. This keeps the user experience consistent.
5. Gitian build / release process should build and ship both projects.

Some of these steps can be done independently of each other.

Anything I forgot? Please keep discussion to concrete development.