[bitcoin-dev] BIP70 is dead. What now?

[Thomas Voegtlin <thomasv@electrum.org>]

I never liked BIP70. It was too complex, had too many features, and when
people discuss it, they do not even agree on what the main feature was.

Nevertheless, there is ONE feature of BIP70 that I find useful: the fact
that payment requests were signed. I am making this post to discuss this.

When I send bitcoins to an exchange, I would like to receive a signed
request. I want to have a proof that the exchange asked me to send coins
to that address, in case it has been hijacked by some intern working
there. If that feature was implemented by an exchange, it would guide my
decision to use that exchange over its competitors.

I do not think that a single exchange ever implemented that, but I guess
this is because BIP70 is a terrible standard. LN payment requests are
signed, do not require SSL, do not require interactivity, and therefore
exchanges use them. Can't we achieve the same for on-chain payments? Is
anyone working on that?

I would be more than happy to remove BIP70 support from Electrum, if
there was another standard for signed requests.

Thomas

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