Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 00:34:46 -0500
From: Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@hozed.org>
To: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net>
Message-ID: <20140327053446.GB3180@nl.grid.coop>
References: <CANEZrP2hbBVGqytmXR1rAcVama4ONnR586Se-Ch=dsxOzy2O4w@mail.gmail.com>
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Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] New BIP32 structure
Precedence: list

On Wed, Mar 26, 2014 at 09:49:39PM +0100, Mike Hearn wrote:
> Myself, Thomas V (Electrum) and Marek (Trezor) got together to make sure
> our BIP32 wallet structures would be compatible - and I discovered that
> only I was planning to use the default structure.
> 
> Because I'm hopeful that we can get a lot of interoperability between
> wallets with regards to importing 12-words paper wallets, we brainstormed
> to find a structure acceptable to everyone and ended up with:
> 
>   /m/cointype/reserved'/account'/change/n
> 
> The extra levels require some explanation:
> 
>    - cointype:  This is zero for Bitcoin. This is here to support two
>    things, one is supporting alt coins based off the same root seed. Right now
>    nobody seemed very bothered about alt coins but sometimes feature requests
>    do come in for this. Arguably there is no need and alt coins could just use
>    the same keys as Bitcoin, but it may help avoid confusion if they don't.

Using the same keys across different altcoins seems like an exceedingly bad opsec
practice. Cointype is critical, as well as having a predictable and deterministic
mapping of alt coins to Cointype.

What should I be using for Catcoin, for instance? the CAT symbol all the 
exchanges use, or do we set up a 'registry', or some other mechanism?

I'd venture to guess the altcoin market is, or soon will be larger in US
dollar value trade volume than Bitcoin, so *some* of us are quite bothered
by the wailing and gnashing of teeth that occurs on this list at mere thought
of such heresy.


-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Troy Benjegerdes                 'da hozer'                  hozer@hozed.org
7 elements      earth::water::air::fire::mind::spirit::soul        grid.coop

      Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,
         nor try buy a hacker who makes money by the megahash