public inbox for bitcoindev@googlegroups.com
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>
To: Matt Whitlock <bip@mattwhitlock.name>
Cc: bitcoin-development <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Presenting a BIP for Shamir's Secret Sharing of Bitcoin private keys
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 2014 09:25:14 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAAS2fgTD7D2SiEOcNkq+MfOPnPJ-D7dOFwO0umwTF0WGQd5d3w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <12583269.b0SUbSGuCb@crushinator>

On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 9:05 AM, Matt Whitlock <bip@mattwhitlock.name> wrote:
> On Friday, 4 April 2014, at 7:14 am, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> I still repeat my concern that any private key secret sharing scheme
>> really ought to be compatible with threshold ECDSA, otherwise we're
>> just going to have another redundant specification.
>
> I have that concern too, but then how can we support secrets of sizes other than 256 bits? A likely use case for this BIP (even more likely than using it to decompose Bitcoin private keys) is using it to decompose BIP32 master seeds, which can be 512 bits in size. We can't use secp256k1_n as the modulus there.

Well, if you're not doing anything homorphic with the result the
computation should probably be over a small field (for computational
efficiency and implementation simplicity reasons) and the data split
up, this also makes it easier to deal with many different data sizes,
since the various sizes will more efficiently divide into the small
field.   The field only needs to be large enough to handle the number
of distinct shares you wish to issue, so even an 8 bit field would
probably be adequate (and yields some very simple table based
implementations).

If that route is taken, rather than encoding BIP32 master keys, it
would probably be prudent to encode the encryption optional version
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=258678.0 ... and if we're
talking about a new armored private key format then perhaps we should
be talking about Mark Friedenbach's error correcting capable scheme:
https://gist.github.com/maaku/8996338#file-bip-ecc32-mediawiki
(though it would be nicer if we could find a decoding scheme that
supported list decoding without increasing the complexity of a basic
implementation, since an advanced recovery tool could make good use of
a list decode)

I'd think that changing to a small field with a simple implementation,
and encoding the form with encryption, etc. probably makes it distinct
enough from an implementation of ECDSA thresholding that redundancy
isn't a problem.



  reply	other threads:[~2014-04-04 16:25 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 90+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2014-04-03 12:41 [Bitcoin-development] Presenting a BIP for Shamir's Secret Sharing of Bitcoin private keys Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-03 21:42 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 13:51   ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-04 14:14     ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-04 16:05       ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 16:25         ` Gregory Maxwell [this message]
2014-04-04 16:36           ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 17:08             ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-04 17:16               ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 17:51                 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-04 18:53                   ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 16:03     ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-08  0:33       ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-08  0:38         ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-08  1:46           ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-08  2:07             ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-08 11:52               ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-10 22:31                 ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-22  8:06                   ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22  8:11                     ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22  8:27                       ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22  8:29                         ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22  8:39                           ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22  8:43                             ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22  8:51                               ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22  9:13                             ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22 11:50                               ` Justin A
2014-04-22  8:35                       ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22  8:39                         ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22  8:40                           ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22  8:43                             ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22  8:47                               ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22  8:50                                 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 15:32                           ` Mark Friedenbach
2014-04-22 15:49                             ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 17:03                               ` Mark Friedenbach
2014-04-22 17:07                               ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22 18:29                                 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 18:46                                   ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23  5:33                                     ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-23  6:16                                       ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-05-05 19:36                                         ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-05-12 12:09                                           ` Jan Møller
2014-08-14 19:23                                             ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-22 13:37                       ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-22  8:15                     ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-22  8:49                       ` Jan Møller
     [not found] <CACsn0ckScTWG4YxNCscxvtdsmcUkxtR2Gi-rdBs2HCkirPz5rA@mail.gmail.com>
2014-03-29 15:44 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 16:59   ` Alan Reiner
2014-03-29 17:19     ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:52       ` Alan Reiner
2014-03-29 18:00         ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 18:08           ` Alan Reiner
2014-03-29 18:10             ` Matt Whitlock
     [not found]               ` <CAAt2M18j7bGDsKouVw+e4j+FMiJ4vK6-sx+nrkwHyiKLqiH7Jg@mail.gmail.com>
2014-03-29 19:34                 ` Natanael
2014-04-04  2:38               ` Jeff Garzik
2014-03-29 18:16         ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 18:41           ` Alan Reiner
2014-03-29 17:28     ` Roy Badami
2014-03-29 17:42       ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:51         ` Roy Badami
2014-03-29 17:28   ` devrandom
     [not found]   ` <1396113933.8809.91.camel@mimiz>
2014-03-29 17:38     ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:46       ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-03-29 19:49         ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 17:48       ` devrandom
2014-03-29 17:51         ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:56           ` devrandom
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2014-03-29  8:05 Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29  8:34 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29  8:44 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29  8:51   ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29  8:54     ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 16:54   ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:37     ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29  9:08 ` Chris Beams
2014-03-29  9:31   ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 11:16   ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 11:54     ` Chris Beams
2014-03-29 13:27       ` Jeff Garzik
2014-03-29 13:36         ` Mike Hearn
2014-03-29 13:38           ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 14:10           ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 14:19             ` Jeff Garzik
2014-03-29 14:55               ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 15:04                 ` Mike Hearn
2014-03-29 14:28             ` Watson Ladd
2014-03-29 14:36               ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-03-29 15:01                 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29  9:21 ` Chris Beams

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=CAAS2fgTD7D2SiEOcNkq+MfOPnPJ-D7dOFwO0umwTF0WGQd5d3w@mail.gmail.com \
    --to=gmaxwell@gmail.com \
    --cc=bip@mattwhitlock.name \
    --cc=bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox