Re: [Bitcoin-development] Alternate HD path structure: BIP, blog, or wat?

[Jonas Schnelli <dev@jonasschnelli.ch>]

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 > m / purpose' / network' / asset_type' / account' / change / index
> 
> ...
> 
> I was also wondering if anyone had previously suggested something 
> similar that I missed when cruising the mailing list archives on
> the subject.


Hi Matt

a)
In my opinion, HD chain standards like Bip43/44 are there to allow
users to use different wallets with the same seed/wordlist (switch
over or use in parallel).
In practice, wallet re-importing / re-creating is not trivial and has
risks of missing out spent or spendable coins.
Take the current landscape. Electrum doesn’t follow the Bip39 standard
[1]. Breadwallet does not support Bip44 [2].
If users start to think, as long as they keep the Bip39 wordlist save,
nothing can happen, is a material fallacy (and i see a trend into this
direction).
A hd seed will not recover your non-blockchain-metadata. HD seed
recovery is a disaster recovery method.

Because of that I am unsure if standards of hd chainstructurs does lead
users and developers into the right directions.
In my opinion, reimporting a hd seed is a experts feature that requires
manual configuration.


b)
Creating deep level chains like m/a/b/c/d/e/f/g/h requires more cpu
power to derive private key with a given seed or wordlist.
If you are using hardware wallets like Trezor or Digitalbitbox, you
probably feel the required time when signing/deriving.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1082586.0
[2] https://github.com/voisine/breadwallet/issues/131

</jonas>
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