Re: [Bitcoin-development] New BIP32 structure

[Thomas Voegtlin <thomasv1@gmx.de>]

Le 27/03/2014 12:30, Marek Palatinus a écrit :
> Ah, I forget to two things, which should be into the BIP as well:
>
> a) Gap factor for addresses; as Thomas mentioned, although some software
> can watch almost unlimited amount of unused addresses, this is serious
> concern for lightweight or server-based wallets like Electrum or
> myTREZOR. myTREZOR currently uses gap factor 10, which is (from my
> experience so far) quite sane for most of users.


Yes, I was planning to increase the number of available unused addresses 
to 10 or 20 in the bip32 version of Electrum.

Related to this, here is another idea I would like to submit:

Instead of using a "gap limit" (maximal number of consecutive unused 
addresses), I think we should get rid of the topology, and simply count 
the number of unused addresses since the beginning of the sequence. 
Indeed, the topology of the sequence of addresses is of no interest to 
the user. Users often misinterpret "gap limit" as the "number of unused 
addresses available", so I think we should just give them what they want 
:) This is easier to understand, and it makes things more predictable, 
because the wallet will always display the same number of unused 
addresses (except when it is waiting for confirmations).