Author: Mike Hearn 2014-04-04 13:08:57
Published on: 2014-04-04T13:08:57+00:00
Eric Larchevêque has written a draft BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) for an authentication protocol based on Bitcoin public address. The aim is to prove to a service/application that we control a specific Bitcoin address by signing a challenge, and that all related data and settings may securely be linked to our session. This approach will greatly facilitate sign-ups and logins to services and applications, improving the Bitcoin ecosystem as a whole. Classical password authentication is an insecure process that could be solved with public key cryptography. Eric formatted the protocol description as a BIP because this is the only way to have all major wallets implementing it. However, some people believe that the problem Eric is trying to solve is already solved by SSL client certificates, and if he wants to make them more widespread, the programs he needs to upgrade are web browsers, not Bitcoin wallets. There are certainly bits of infrastructure that could be reused here and there, but overall, Bitcoin and website authentication are unrelated problems.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T18:22:29.681304+00:00