Author: Thomas Voegtlin 2014-04-08 13:59:36
Published on: 2014-04-08T13:59:36+00:00
On April 8, 2014, Pieter Wuille suggested an alternative solution to a disagreement with another person. The disagreement revolved around sharing a single BIP32 tree across different currency types in a way that guarantees they never use the same keys. Wuille proposed an alternative suggestion that is compatible with the original default BIP32 structure. This alternative suggests that one seed can be used across different chains, but the master nodes are separate. To derive the master node from the seed, the key string "Bitcoin seed" is replaced by something chain-specific. Every encoded node (including master nodes) has a chain-specific serialization magic. This alternative is almost the same as the other person's suggestion, except that the m/cointype' in m/cointype'/account'/change/n is replaced by different masters. The only disadvantage is that there is no way to encode the "super master" that is the parent of all chain-specific masters. However, it is possible to encode the seed with the same security properties.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T16:11:27.051658+00:00