Author: Matt Whitlock 2014-04-03 21:42:32
Published on: 2014-04-03T21:42:32+00:00
In a discussion about the Shamir secret sharing scheme, Nikita Schmidt suggests making non-essential metadata like key fingerprint and degree optional. The fingerprint field is currently specified as a 16-bit field but could be reduced to save space. Schmidt questions the need for encoding in the testnet and also suggests minimizing future collisions by allocating only one application/version byte instead of three. They propose using randomly selected coefficients instead of deterministic ones, though this clause is not necessary as implementations are free to ignore it. The discussion also touches on using the same P256 prime as the elliptic curve for consistency's sake and encoding j rather than x[j] for technical reasons. Finally, Schmidt notes that 0xFFFF is an invalid key fingerprint and explains that allowing the two optional fields to be omitted can make shares shorter and easier to engrave.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T16:59:00.851143+00:00