AJ West [ARCHIVE] / is on Nostr

⚠️ This account is not associated with a real person. It's an archival account for mailing list messages.
🗓️ Active from 2017-03-27 to 2018-06-30
💬 Posted a total of 5 messages
📚 Participated in the following categories: bitcoin-dev
🔇 Please do not DM this user as it's used for archive purposes only.

Last Notes

2023-06-07 18:13:23

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2018-06-30
📝 Original message:Hi Breno,
There has been discussion on various ways to improve multilingual usage of
BIP39. https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/
2018-January/015500.html
My takeaway is that we should be implementing a standard way to convert any
words into a hex string, regardless of language or character encoding. In
that discussion there was some notion of "who needs anything but English
words anyway?" rhetoric, so I'm happy to see yet again that there exists an
obvious need to support all languages for a standard in wallet seed
generation.
I realise that doesn't help you today considering there is no such
multilingual standard or official Portuguese wordlist, but I wanted to
express that this is an ongoing topic of discussion and it's clear we need
to start choosing/codifying a standard in this regard.
That said, here's somebody who has started a Portuguese wordlist so maybe
you can start from there.
https://github.com/bitpay/bitcore-mnemonic/issues/52
Regards,
AJ
On Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 11:58 AM, Breno Brito via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Since Portuguese is considered the 6th most spoken language in the world
> and is an official language in 10 countries, I'd like to propose the
> expansion of the BIP039 wordlist to Portuguese or help if someone had
> already proposed it. What should I do?
>
> Regards,
> Breno
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20180630/d3405407/attachment.html>

2023-06-07 18:09:23

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2018-01-08
📝 Original message:Greg yes, there were already examples in this very thread of people
explaining how they use languages other than English. I'm shocked that so
many people are resisting the idea that just *maybe* there could be people
in other parts of the world who do not want to use or cannot use the strict
set of latin characters and words from the English language.
I agree with Sjors and maybe I'm simplifying too much, but can't we just
map an existing ISO/UTF language character standard to the seeds? Why is
there a word list at all? Choose a flexible encoding standard, create a
clever map to the bytes, make sure to include a checksum.
As an aside, I know there are some conventions which add space for error
correction but I personally don't love the idea of somebody inputting what
they think is the proper seed, only to have it auto-corrected and thus
reinforcing their erroneously saved/written seed backup.
Pavol, why do you say "I learned that it was something I should've been
more persistently against?" I still can't see any good arguments as to why
we should limit this to English other than "It's easier to support a single
language" which comes at the cost of "It's hard for me to backup my seed"
for those who don't speak English.
On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 10:23 AM, Matias Alejo Garcia via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > Let me re-phrase: Is it a known thing for users to actually use it?
>
> yes. Based on language stats from the app stores, roughly 30% to 40% of
> Copay users have their backup on a language
> other than English, and we constantly get requests to support new
> languages in BIP39.
>
> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 11:54 AM, Greg Sanders <gsanders87 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Let me re-phrase: Is it a known thing for users to actually use it?
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 9:52 AM, Matias Alejo Garcia <ematiu at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 11:34 AM, Greg Sanders via bitcoin-dev <
>>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Has anyone actually used the multilingual support in bip39?
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Copay (and all its clones) use it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> If a feature of the standard has not been(widely?) used in years, and
>>>> isn't supported in any major wallet(?), it seems indicative it was a
>>>> mistake to add it in the first place, since it's a footgun in the making
>>>> for some poor sap who can't even read English letters when almost all
>>>> documentation is written in English.
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jan 8, 2018 at 6:13 AM, nullius via bitcoin-dev <
>>>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 2018-01-08 at 07:35:52 +0000, 木ノ下じょな <kinoshitajona at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> This is very sad.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The number one problem in Japan with BIP39 seeds is with English
>>>>>> words.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have seen a 60 year old Japanese man writing down his phrase
>>>>>> (because he kept on failing recovery), and watched him write down "aneter"
>>>>>> for "amateur"...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [...]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you understand English and can spell, you read a word, your brain
>>>>>> processes the word, and you can spell it on your own when writing down.
>>>>>> Not many Japanese people can do that, so they need to copy letter for
>>>>>> letter, taking a long time, and still messing up on occasion.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [...]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Defining "everyone should only use English, because ASCII is easier
>>>>>> to plan for" is not a good way to move forward as a currency.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Well said. Thank you for telling of these experiences. Now please,
>>>>> let’s put the shoe on the other foot.
>>>>>
>>>>> I ask everybody who wants an English-only mnemonic standard to entrust
>>>>> *their own money* to their abilities to very, very carefully write this
>>>>> down—then later, type it back in:
>>>>>
>>>>> すさんたんろりゆうしもんていおんしとう
>>>>> とこやはやいおうさまほくろけちゃっふたもつ
>>>>>
>>>>> (Approximate translation: “Whatever would you do if Bitcoin had been
>>>>> invented by somebody named Satoshi Nakamoto?”)
>>>>>
>>>>> No, wait: That is only a 12-word mnemonic. We are probably talking
>>>>> about a Trezor; so now, hey you there, stake the backup of your life’s
>>>>> savings on your ability to handwrite *this*:
>>>>>
>>>>> にあうしひょうにんすうひえるかいこういのるねんしはあさんひこく
>>>>> とうくきもためしそなたこなこなにさんかたんそろんきめいあんみわく
>>>>> へこむすひょうおやゆひふせくけさきめいきょくこんまけ
>>>>>
>>>>> Ready to bet your money on *that* as a backup phrase in your own
>>>>> hands? No? Then please, stop demanding that others risk *their* money on
>>>>> the inverse case.
>>>>>
>>>>> ----
>>>>>
>>>>> If you cheat here by having studied Japanese, then remember that many
>>>>> Japanese people know English and other European languages, too. Then think
>>>>> of how much money would be lost by your non-Japanese-literate family and
>>>>> friends—if BIP 39 had only Japanese wordlists, and your folks needed to
>>>>> wrestle with the above phrases as their “mnemonics”.
>>>>>
>>>>> In such cases, the phrases cannot be called “mnemonics” at all. A
>>>>> “mnemonic” implies aid to memory. Gibberish in a wholly alien writing
>>>>> system is much worse even than transcribing pseudorandom hex strings. The
>>>>> Japanese man in the quoted story, who wrote “aneter” for “amateur”, was not
>>>>> dealing with a *mnemonic*: He was using the world’s most inefficient means
>>>>> of making cryptic bitstrings *less* userfriendly.
>>>>>
>>>>> ----
>>>>>
>>>>> I began this thread with a quite simple request: Is “日本語” an
>>>>> appropriate string for identifying the Japanese language to Japanese
>>>>> users? And what of the other strings I posted for other languages?
>>>>>
>>>>> I asked this as an implementer working on my own instance of the
>>>>> greatest guard against vendor lock-in and stale software: Independent
>>>>> implementations. — I asked, because obviously, I myself do not speak all
>>>>> these different languages; and I want to implement them all. *All.*
>>>>>
>>>>> Some replies have been interesting in their own right; but thus far,
>>>>> nobody has squarely addressed the substance of my question.
>>>>>
>>>>> Most worrisome is that much of the discussion has veered into
>>>>> criticism of multi-language support. I opened with a question about other
>>>>> languages, and I am getting replies which raise a hue and cry of “English
>>>>> only!”
>>>>>
>>>>> Though I am fluent and literate in English, I am uninterested in ever
>>>>> implementing any standard of this nature which is artificially restricted
>>>>> to English. I am fortunate; for as of this moment, we have a standard
>>>>> called “BIP 39” which has seven non-English wordlists, and four more
>>>>> pending in open pull requests (#432, #442, #493, #621).
>>>>>
>>>>> I request discussion of language identification strings appropriate
>>>>> for use with that standard.
>>>>>
>>>>> (P.S., I hope that my system did not mangle anything in the
>>>>> foregoing. I have seen weird copypaste behaviour mess up decomposed
>>>>> characters. I thought of this after I searched for and collected some
>>>>> visually fascinating phrases; so I tried to normalize these to NFC... It
>>>>> should go without saying, easyseed output the Japanese perfectly!)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> nullius at nym.zone | PGP ECC: 0xC2E91CD74A4C57A105F6C21B5A00591B2F307E0C
>>>>> Bitcoin: bc1qcash96s5jqppzsp8hy8swkggf7f6agex98an7h | (Segwit nested:
>>>>> 3NULL3ZCUXr7RDLxXeLPDMZDZYxuaYkCnG) (PGP RSA: 0x36EBB4AB699A10EE)
>>>>> “‘If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.’
>>>>> No! Because I do nothing wrong, I have nothing to show.” — nullius
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> bitcoin-dev mailing list
>>>>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
>>>>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> bitcoin-dev mailing list
>>>> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
>>>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Matías Alejo Garcia
>>> @ematiu
>>> Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Matías Alejo Garcia
> @ematiu
> Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20180108/67000d6f/attachment.html>

2023-06-07 18:08:10

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2017-12-05
📝 Original message:Hello,
I would like to refer to these BIPs in other contexts and conversations.
Regardless of the pitfalls or benefits, the discussion and technical review
happening in this thread (and the ones before) are well-formed ideas with
an active champion. The point of BIP numbers/conventions are so we're all
on the same page about what we're talking about.
Please assign these BIP numbers so discussion may continue in a controlled,
tagged, linear manner, instead of "the first BIP" and "the second BIP."
Thank you
AJ West
On Tue, Dec 5, 2017 at 1:05 PM, Paul Sztorc via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Hello Chris,
>
> 1. Marginal Cost
>
> There actually is a very small cost to casting a malicious vote, relative
> to an honest vote. This is because the software (when run as-is), will
> automatically vote correctly. But to vote fraudulently you must decide on
> what to do instead, and configure that! This might not be as easy as it
> seems (see collective action part, below).
>
> It is true that there is no *marginal* cost to creating a bad vote, in the
> fraudulent withdrawal case. But then again there is no marginal cost to
> creating a good vote either -- in fact there is no cost at all. In fact,
> there is no marginal cost to creating a bad block either, in the 51%
> hashrate reorganization case. Epistemologically, the protocol has no way of
> differentiating a "bad" block/vote from a good one. So one cannot "cost"
> more than the other, in a narrow sense.
>
> I suppose in the reorganization case there is the risk of lost mining
> effort on a chain that actually does *not* have 51% and therefore won't
> catch up. But this only encourages conformity to the longest chain,
> including fraudulent chains. For example, imagine that the reorganization
> is done via secretly mining a longer chain -- once that chain is published,
> it will be the longest. Then, according to your framework, there will be a
> "marginal cost" to doing the *right* thing (trying to preserve the honest,
> transparent chain). So I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean.
>
> 2. Repercussions
>
> As for there being no repercussions, that is incorrect. The miner's choice
> to engage in a fraudulent withdraw is one that has several negative
> consequences. They take a variety of forms and likelihoods, but they
> definitely exist and are very relevant.
>
> The first repercussion is the loss of victim-sidechain future tx-fees. A
> second is the loss of all future tx fees on all sidechains. A third is that
> the Bitcoin super-network is changed from being a "sidechain enabled"
> network to a "sidechain disabled" network.
>
> The impact of these repercussions is still unclear and open to
> interpretation. On one hand, the impact may be small and therefore not very
> persuasive (as in the case where a sidechain has few tx-fees, few
> sidechains are used, few are expected to be created/used, and so little is
> lost by attacking). On the other hand, a single fraudulent withdrawal might
> motivate the creation of a new spinoff network that is exactly the same as
> the old network, but with merely two changes: the fraudulent withdrawal
> surgically removed (as if it were never attempted) AND a new proof of work
> algorithm. Since the withdrawals are so slow, there would be plenty of time
> to organize such an option (and people who already want a pow-change would
> jump at this glaring opportunity). Will the repercussions be small or
> large? Even if there is only a *risk* of large repercussions, it can be
> very persuasive. (Just as the IRS is very persuasive to tax-paying
> Americans, even though only a tiny proportion of tax returns are audited.)
>
> 0. Useless Sidechain Fallacy
>
> Finally, you are joining the long list of people who are committing the
> "useless sidechain fallacy". You are saying that because you believe the
> sidechain is useless, therefore everyone must believe as you do, and
> therefore the option to use a sidechain must be one that has zero value.
> However, in the real world people are heterogeneous. They may decide that
> your interpretation contains errors, or else their circumstances might
> incline them towards a different risk-reward tradeoff. Finally, this
> fallacy obfuscates the main benefit of sidechains, which is that they are
> optional -- the sidechain-designer must convince users to deposit funds
> there.
>
> 3. Collective Action Problem
>
> There actually is a collective action problem inherent to fraudulent
> withdrawals.
>
> If miners wish to fraudulently withdraw from the sidechain, they need to
> choose the destination addresses (on mainchain Bitcoin Core) months in
> advance. Then they need to upvote/downvote this destination, despite that
> fact that --during this time-- new hashpower might be coming
> online/offline, and/or hashers might be joining/leaving specific pools. I
> bring this up to demonstrate that even the most straightforward attack (of
> "a 51% hashrate group attacks a sidechain and distributes the proceeds to
> the group proportional to hashpower") is actually one that contains a
> difficult (and potentially interminable) negotiation. The effort required
> to initiate the negotiation is the source of the collective action problem
> here.
>
> I think that this collective action problem is actually more burdensome
> than Bitcoin's -- for mainchain Bitcoin miners merely need to decide which
> block height they intend to reorganize from.
>
> You may wish to read Drivechain's security model to learn more:
> http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/drivechain/#drivechains-security
>
> In this case, I don't see a way to measure "security" cardinally or
> ordinally. Instead, I am only able to see it as either "secure enough" or
> "not secure enough". But perhaps someone can enlighten me as to the math
> they are using to produce these cardinal/ordinal rankings.
>
> --Paul
>
>
> On 12/4/2017 2:36 PM, Chris Pacia wrote:
>
>
> I think you are missing a few things.
>
> First of all, I think the security model for sidechains is the same as
> that of every blockchain
>
> People will say things, like "but with sidechains 51% hashrate can steal
> your coins!", but as I have repeated many times, this is also true of
> mainchain btc-tx. is something else?
>
>
> There are substantial opportunity costs as well as a collective action
> problem when it comes to re-writing the mainchain.
>
> Is there anything similar for drivechains? As far as I can tell there is
> no opportunity cost to casting a malicious vote, no repercussions, and no
> collective action barrier that needs to be overcome.
>
> Unless I'm missing something I wouldn't liken the security of a drivechain
> to that of the mainchain.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20171205/c6cc0277/attachment.html>

2023-06-07 18:06:06

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2017-09-17
📝 Original message:Hi I have a small interjection about the point on error correction (excuse
me if it seems elementary). Isn't there an argument to be made where a
wallet software should never attempt to figure out the 'correct' address,
or in this case private key? I don't think it's crazy to suggest somebody
could import a slightly erroneous WIF, the software gracefully
error-corrects any problem, but then the user copies that error onward such
as in their backup processes like a paper wallet. I always hate to advocate
against a feature, I'm just worried too much error correcting removes the
burden of exactitude and attention of the user (eg. "I know I can have up
to 4 errors").
I'm pretty sure I read those arguments somewhere in a documentation or
issue tracker/forum post. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the bigger picture in
this particular case, but I was just reminded of that concept (even if it
only applies generally).
Thanks,
AJ West
On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 4:10 AM, Thomas Voegtlin via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> On 17.09.2017 04:29, Pieter Wuille wrote:
> >
> > This has been a low-priority thing for me, though, and the computation
> work
> > to find a good checksum is significant.
> >
>
> Thanks for the info. I guess this means that a bech32 format for private
> keys is not going to happen soon. Even if such a format was available,
> the issue would remain for segwit-in-p2sh addresses, which use base58.
>
> The ambiguity of the WIF format is currently holding me from releasing a
> segwit-capable version of Electrum. I believe it is not acceptable to
> use the current WIF format with segwit scripts; that would just create
> technological debt, forcing wallets to try all possible scripts. There
> is a good reason why WIF adds a 0x01 byte for compressed pubkeys; it
> makes it unambiguous.
>
> I see only two options:
> 1. Disable private keys export in Electrum Segwit wallets, until a
> common WIF extension has been agreed on.
> 2. Define my own WIF extension for Electrum, and go ahead with it.
>
> Defining my own format does make sense for the xpub/xprv format, because
> Electrum users need to share master public keys across Electrum wallets.
> It makes much less sense for WIF, though, because WIF is mostly used to
> import/sweep keys from other wallets.
>
> I would love to know what other wallet developers are going to do,
> especially Core. Are you going to export private keys used in segwit
> scripts in the current WIF format?
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20170917/d9c8062b/attachment.html>

2023-06-07 17:57:33

- reply

📅 Original date posted:2017-03-27
📝 Original message:Hi I'm AJ West, I made a service http://preferredminer.com which is a
proof-of-concept project designed to spur discussion on exactly this issue
of "miners as service providers."
The current status is that Bitcoin end users are looking to support
specific miners, whether that's because they agree with a miner/pool's
political positions, their consensus ideology, physical location (yes some
people would like only miners in particular countries to mine their
transactions) and the list of reasons goes on. The main attitude right now
is that people would like to 'support' miners who signal for the features
they care about.
I strongly believe, whether the Bitcoin developer community facilitates it
or not, certain miners will become preferred by users. In summary, there
are realistically two proposed ways of providing this service in the
present-day situation: 1) By creating 'segregated mempools' where an
authenticated third-party like my web service Preferred Miner manages the
access to pending transactions destined for a specific set of miners, and
2) by creating transactions where the mining fee is in one way or another,
an output to an address owned by the preferred miner(s).
There are some terrible pitfalls with both of these methods. The first
being that you have to trust a lot of people, including the 3rd party (me)
and the pools to work in your users' interest ("don't give my transactions
to other miners or broadcast to mempool please"). Then there are the extra
fees users will have to pay to offset the risk of a miner losing out for
having to send the network a not-yet-broadcasted transaction. And finally,
the other method requires that they be larger transactions, and a directory
of mining pools' receiving addresses for outputs must be maintained. Then
you have to hope the miner will be setup to scoop in your transaction
knowing it's got a fee for them. Plus, how many nodes going forward are
going to hold what seem to be 0-fee transactions in mempool (because the
fee is in the outputs)?
I am not necessarily looking for answers or solutions to these issues, but
simply to show a case and to express that this idea of having specific
miners/pools process their transactions, is important to some people.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20170327/33df8bb3/attachment.html>