I've been thinking about the problems with the android client and decided that the simplest solution is to have the client code not do network contact until needed and be clear about which methods block on network and which don't

that way, the UI can load and allow the user to do things while waiting for the network calls for balance and such

pretty obvious, but I got too used to fast and reliable networking and wasn

't thinking about it

yeah, it makes sense

a fuller solution would be an event based library, but as we don't have server->client notifications yet that is probably not called for

android allows apps to have background services, just make one which polls and emits the events

then later it can just switch the polling for subscription sockets