📅 Original date posted:2023-08-04
🗒️ Summary of this message: Wallet addresses generated from compromised or lost wallets can result in lost funds. Silent Payment addresses should have an expiration date, such as 180 years, to prevent this.
📝 Original message:
Why the 180 year limit? imho should plan for longer.
On Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 10:41 AM Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> tl;dr: Wallets don't last forever. They are often compromised or lost. When
> this happens, the addresses generated from those wallets become a form of
> toxic
> data: funds sent to those addresses can be easily lost forever.
>
> All Bitcoin addresses have this problem. But at least existing Bitcoin
> addresses aren't supposed to be reused. Silent Payments are: the whole
> point is
> to have a single address that you can safely pay to multiple times, without
> privacy concerns. Failing to make Silent Payment addresses eventually
> expire in
> a reasonable amount of time is thus a particularly harmful mistake.
>
> Fixing this is easy: add a 3 byte field to silent payments addresses,
> encoding
> the expiration date in terms of days after some epoch. 2^24 days is 45,000
> years, more than enough. Indeed, 2 bytes is probably fine too: 2^16 days
> is 180
> years. We'll be lucky if Bitcoin still exists in 180 years.
>
> Wallets should pick a reasonable default, eg 1 year, for newly created
> addresses. Attempts to pay an expired address should just fail with a
> simple
> "address expired". Lightning invoices are a good example here: while
> invoices
> does not require expiration from a technical point of view, they do expire
> for
> similar UX reasons as applies to silent payments.
>
> --
> https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
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Samson Mow [ARCHIVE] /
npub1ka…eucdz
2023-08-06 23:37:35
in reply to nevent1q…en9a
Author Public Key
npub1kak8yfezzae4wds05nj6kr0k43hv6c524tqx8qggafnqak5r2hqqyeucdzSeen on
wss://relay.nostr.bandPublished at
2023-08-06 23:37:35Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2023-08-04\n🗒️ Summary of this message: Wallet addresses generated from compromised or lost wallets can result in lost funds. Silent Payment addresses should have an expiration date, such as 180 years, to prevent this.\n📝 Original message:\nWhy the 180 year limit? imho should plan for longer.\n\nOn Fri, Aug 4, 2023 at 10:41 AM Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev \u003c\nbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\n\u003e tl;dr: Wallets don't last forever. They are often compromised or lost. When\n\u003e this happens, the addresses generated from those wallets become a form of\n\u003e toxic\n\u003e data: funds sent to those addresses can be easily lost forever.\n\u003e\n\u003e All Bitcoin addresses have this problem. But at least existing Bitcoin\n\u003e addresses aren't supposed to be reused. Silent Payments are: the whole\n\u003e point is\n\u003e to have a single address that you can safely pay to multiple times, without\n\u003e privacy concerns. Failing to make Silent Payment addresses eventually\n\u003e expire in\n\u003e a reasonable amount of time is thus a particularly harmful mistake.\n\u003e\n\u003e Fixing this is easy: add a 3 byte field to silent payments addresses,\n\u003e encoding\n\u003e the expiration date in terms of days after some epoch. 2^24 days is 45,000\n\u003e years, more than enough. Indeed, 2 bytes is probably fine too: 2^16 days\n\u003e is 180\n\u003e years. We'll be lucky if Bitcoin still exists in 180 years.\n\u003e\n\u003e Wallets should pick a reasonable default, eg 1 year, for newly created\n\u003e addresses. Attempts to pay an expired address should just fail with a\n\u003e simple\n\u003e \"address expired\". Lightning invoices are a good example here: while\n\u003e invoices\n\u003e does not require expiration from a technical point of view, they do expire\n\u003e for\n\u003e similar UX reasons as applies to silent payments.\n\u003e\n\u003e --\n\u003e https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org\n\u003e _______________________________________________\n\u003e bitcoin-dev mailing list\n\u003e bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\n\u003e https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev\n\u003e\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20230804/fc013648/attachment-0001.html\u003e",
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