Re: [Bitcoin-development] Stealth Addresses

[Peter Todd <pete@petertodd.org>]

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On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 04:05:27PM -0800, Jeremy Spilman wrote:
> Might I propose "reusable address".
> 
> I think that describes it best to any non-programmer, and even more
> so encourages wallets to present options as 'one time use' vs
> 'reusable'.
> 
> It definitely packs a marketing punch which could help drive
> adoption. The feature is only useful if/when broadly adopted.

I'm very against the name "reusable addresses" and strongly belive we
should stick with the name stealth addresses.

You gotta look at it from the perspective of a user; lets take standard
pay-to-pubkey-hash addresses: I can tell my wallet to pay one as many
times as I want and everything works just great. I also can enter the
address on blockchain.info's search box, and every transaction related
to the address, and the balance of it, pops up immediately.

What is that telling me? A: Addresses starting with "1" are reusable. B:
Transactions associated with them appear to be public knowledge.

Now I upgrade my wallet software and it says I now have a "reusable"
address. My reaction is "Huh? Normal addresses are reusable, what's
special about this weird reusable address thing that my buddy Bob's
wallet software couldn't pay." I might even try to enter in a "reusable"
address in blockchain.info, which won't work, and I'll just figure
"must be some new unsupported thing" and move on with my life.

On the other hand, suppose my wallet says I now have "stealth address"
support. I'm going to think "Huh, stealth? I guess that means privacy
right? I like privacy." If I try searching for a stealth address on
blockchain.info, when it doesn't work I might think twig on "Oh right!
It said stealth addresses are private, so maybe the transactions are
hidden?" I might also think "Maybe this is like stealth/incognito mode
in my browser? So like, there's no history being kept for others to
see?" Regardless, I'm going to be thinking "well I hear scary stuff
about Bitcoin privacy, and this stealth thing sounds like it's gonna
help, so I should learn more about that"

Finally keep in mind that stealth addresses have had a tonne of very
fast, and very wide reaching PR. The name is in the public conciousness
already, and trying to change it now just because of vague bad
associations is going to throw away the momentum of that good PR and
slow down adoption. Last night I was at the Toronto Bitcoin Meetup and I
based on conversations there with people there, technical and
non-technical, almost everyone had heard about them and almost everyone
seemed to understand the basic idea of why they were a good thing. That
just wouldn't have happened with a name that tried to hide what stealth
addresses were for, and by changing the name now we risk people not
making the connection when wallet software gets upgraded to support
them.

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
0000000000000001b0e0ae7ef97681ad77188030b6c791aef304947e6f524740

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