[Bitcoin-development] Optional "wallet-linkable" address format (Re-request)

[Alan Reiner <etotheipi@gmail.com>]

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Guys,

I'd like to reiterate my previous request to support this alternate
address serialization in the payment protocol.  We got caught up in the
specifics of one use case, but didn't acknowledge that it's still a
valid address representation that will provide value to those who wish
to use it and can be safely ignored by others.

Current address format:   binary_to_base58( idbyte + hash160(pubkey) +
checksum)
Alternate format:         binary_to_base58( idbyte + parentpubkey +
multiplier + checksum)

The receiving party will multiply the pubkey by the multiplier, and then
hash it to get the 20-byte address to send to.  The idea is that you use
your BIP 32 parent public key, and then you generate whatever child you
want, and only send them the multiplier used (not the chaincode).  This
preserves privacy, but if the recipient has your parent public key
already, they can identify that address being linked to you, but cannot
determine any other addresses in your wallet.

This form has no drawbacks to the existing address format except for
being longer and requiring an extra EC multiplication by the person
sending to that address.  But the advantage is that it optionally allows
the sender to provide more information than currently contained in the
25-byte hash160 form.  The discussion about this got side-tracked with
the use case I presented, but I believe there are plenty of other uses
for this.

The particular use case I had in mind was that certain services could be
setup (pre-arranged), say between wallet software and a
business/exchange.  The exchange would like to be able to reliably send
addresses to the user for deposit, without risk of MITM, or even if
their own public server is compromised.  The author of wallet software
pre-verifies the public key portion of the service, and either hardcodes
it into the software, or hardcodes their own public key into the
software and makes the service's signed public key available through
query server (allowing the software author to offline-sign replacement
keys, or add keys for new service providers, as needed). 

When the user's software receives a payment address, the software can
verify it belongs to that service.  You can't use dedicated chain
technique, because it would either have to be exchanged with the user on
first transaction which half defeats the purpose, or they give them the
full public key and chaincode which allows the user to see /all
/addresses ever used by the service.  Neither one is a reasonable solution.

This use case doesn't necessarily scale, but it doesn't have to.  It
simply allows service providers to skip the SSL and go right to public
key exchange/verification for a few of the important services they
provide access to, and will provide better security than relying on
SSL/PKI.  This would simply be one, coexisting option for providing
payment details in the absence (or in addition to) SSL/PKI infrastructure.

I'm sure there's other use cases, but it seems simple enough and
non-disruptive enough that it could be supported easily for no other
reason than to support that use case (which I intend to implement in
Armory to help verify high-volume services).

-Alan





On 06/26/2013 11:29 AM, Alan Reiner wrote:
> Although I'd still prefer my original request, I get much of what I
> want from your guys' recommendation.  It complicates the wallet
> design, because it requires tracking and associating a matrix of
> addresses for each wallet, instead of a single linear list.  But if
> this is what it's going to take then I will go along. 
>
> Right now BIP 32 defines, m/i'/j/k, where j=0 is the "external" chain
> used for distributing addresses, and j=1 is the "internal" chain for
> sending change.  The CONOPs (concept of operations) for the extended
> wallet would be like Jeremy described:
>
> - Chains with j>=2 would be independent address chains carved out for
> individuals relationships
> - Add wallet code to individually associate each j-value with a
> particular identity
> - Update the wallet code to pool all the addresses in all j-chains
> when calculating the balance of the wallet and/or creating transactions
> - When choosing to generically "Receive Bitcoins", will pick the next
> address from the j=0 chain
> - Will have to add extra function to "Receive Bitcoins" button to
> allow creation of new contacts/identities.
> - Change will always go to the next address in j=1, no matter which
> chains are used to provide inputs.
> - Add code to figure out lookaheads for each alternate chain.  Not
> just each chain, but looking ahead a couple chains, too.  Luckily, the
> lookahead doesn't have to be very big for chains j>=1 
> - Add an interface to display and choose the different chains in your
> wallet, and export the pubkey&chaincode in some
> soon-to-be-standardized format. 
> - Add code and interface to receive and track alternate j-chains from
> other clients/users, and maintain those.  Should we try associating
> incoming and outgoing chains?  What happens if they do it wrong?  Meh...
>
> Just as one final swipe at this idea, you can see that I gotta do
> quite a bit of work to support the multi-chain idea, and adds a little
> extra burden on the user to maintain the organization of the wallet. 
> This would all be totally unnecessary with a simple alternate
> encoding.  Granted, I think the multi-chain idea is good, and one that
> I will probably implement anyway, but it seems like overkill in terms
> of developer complexity, and interface complexity to achieve something
> much simpler.  Developers of much simpler/lightweight clients would
> probably find this prohibitive.
>
> On another note:  I thought we weren't encouraging automatic payments
> without requesting from the other party...?  It makes me uneasy, but
> it sounds like group thought has converged on that being acceptable. 
> I bring it up, because there are situations where it makes sense, but
> it sounds unsafe for general users.   Alice will give Bob his own
> chain for sending Alice money, then a year later Bob will send money
> automatically to Alice not realizing that the wallet was lost, retired
> or compromised.  It's not that Bob can't ask for a new address, it's
> that if the interface says "Send Money to Alice", that looks legit
> enough that Bob may not feel it necessary to check with Alice first.  
> That's more of an interface issue though.  We can add a warning to
> "check with the recipient that they still have access to wallet
> 3cQ398x", etc.   But I just know someone is going to lose money anyway...
>
> -Alan
>
>
>
>
>
> On 06/20/2013 03:32 AM, Mike Hearn wrote:
>> Agree with Jeremy and once the payment protocol work is further along
>> I'd like to see us define an extension that lets you send payment
>> requests containing public keys+chain codes, so further payments can
>> be made push-style with no recipient interaction (e.g. for repeated
>> billing). How apps choose to arrange their chains internally seems
>> like an area for experimentation. I definitely want to implement HD
>> wallets in bitcoinj to allow this and if that means not using the
>> same tree structure as in the BIP then so be it.
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 20, 2013 at 5:54 AM, Jeremy Spilman <jeremy@taplink.co
>> <mailto:jeremy@taplink.co>> wrote:
>>
>>     > BIP 32 already specifies how to use the first three tree
>>     levels:  M/i/j/k,
>>     > i~wallet, j~Internal/External, k~address.  The first level is
>>     actually
>>     > type-1 derived, and thus we cannot create an arbitrary number
>>     of them
>>     > without pre-computing them from the offline wallet.  So it's
>>     not "free" to
>>     > create new wallets unless we redefine how the levels work.
>>
>>     Initially I was thinking that you would share the public key and
>>     chain code
>>     from [m/i'/0] so that you can receive payments at [m/i'/0/k], for
>>     a unique
>>     value of 'i' for each receive chain.
>>
>>     For the case of generating new receive chains from a *watch-only*
>>     wallet, as
>>     you say, the options are to either keep a cache of
>>     PubKey/ChainCode for
>>     unused [m/i'] or simply increment 'j' past 1 for an existing
>>     [m/i'/j] -- the
>>     concept of 'internal/'external' and change addresses at Depth=2
>>     don't make
>>     sense for handing out receive chains to lots of people anyway,
>>     and certainly
>>     BIP32 doesn't *require* 0 <= j <= 1.  So I think incrementing 'j'
>>     is the way
>>     to go here...
>>
>>     The "default" layout of BIP32 does NOT mean that implementations
>>     should not
>>     check for transactions with j > 1. That would be a useless
>>     constraint and
>>     obviously self-limiting. It might be helpful to add to the
>>     'Compatibility'
>>     section some minimum expectations about how a wallet should be
>>     'probed' when
>>     imported. If you don't feel completely free to monotonically
>>     increment 'j'
>>     to your hearts content to achieve major usability benefits, then
>>     I say BIP32
>>     could use some clarifying.
>>
>>     BTW - the spec calls for addition not multiplication now, so we
>>     should call
>>     it the 'Addend' not the 'Multiplier' :-)
>>
>>     > Do these extra wallet chains behave as different wallets, or
>>     sub-wallets?
>>
>>     They could, but they certainly don't need to!  A single-wallet
>>     implementation treats this merely as an address-generation
>>     algorithm, and
>>     does not expose any hierarchy to the user interface.  The user just
>>     "magically" gets the ability to send multiple payments to their
>>     contacts
>>     without immediately sacrificing their privacy
>>     (http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/06/bitcoin_retai/).
>>     Everything
>>     goes into the same ledger, balance, coin pool, etc. Most of the
>>     code base is
>>     unaware BIP32 is even in use.
>>
>>     While it is *possible* to support separate ledgers, balances,
>>     etc. it is
>>     certainly not required, and you get all the benefits either way.
>>
>>     I think, since your proposal generates and receives payments into
>>     BIP32-style addresses, we both need similar underlying wallet
>>     code. The only
>>     difference is that you are passing the Kpar for [m/i'/0/k] and
>>     the *result*
>>     of CKD'((Kpar, cpar), k), and instead I proposed passing Kpar and
>>     cpar, and
>>     leaving 'k' out of it, letting the receive choose 'k'.
>>
>>     > For instance, maybe there's a benefit to using the same parent
>>     pubkey
>>     > across multiple services, as a form of identity.   If I don't
>>     want that, I
>>     > use your method.  If I do want that, I use my method.
>>
>>     I think it's a interesting idea using static public keys as a
>>     means for
>>     persistent identity and hence security from MitM. If you want a
>>     shared
>>     public key across multiple services we could just combine both
>>     ideas and get
>>     all the benefits, by making the data structure { ParentPubKey,
>>     Addend,
>>     ChainCode }:
>>
>>        ParentPubKey: Public key of m/i' -- 33 bytes
>>        Addend: I[L]*G from CDK'(m/i', j) -- 33 bytes
>>        ChainCode: I[R] from CDK'(m/i', j) -- 32 bytes
>>
>>     All that remains secret is the ChainCode from [m/i'] -- and of
>>     course the
>>     private keys.  The ParentPubKey is a common value across multiple
>>     services,
>>     corresponding to user's identity rooted in [m/i'].  Each service
>>     gets their
>>     own 'j'.  ParentPubKey + Addend gives you the PubKey of [m/i'/j].
>>      With the
>>     ChainCode, the receiver then can generate [m/i'/j/k] for
>>     monotonically
>>     increasing 'k'. Again, from the user perspective all transactions
>>     under
>>     [m/i'] can be presented in a single ledger, or not.
>>
>>     Anyway, fundamentally my feedback is if you are designing for
>>     persistent
>>     long-term relationships, you could build in a mechanism for
>>     generating
>>     address chains so you don't need any further communication after
>>     the initial
>>     exchange, and it need not complicate the wallet.
>>
>>     Thanks,
>>     --Jeremy
>>
>>
>>
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