Author: Jeff Garzik 2014-04-26 16:03:31
Published on: 2014-04-26T16:03:31+00:00
The email conversation between Gregory Maxwell and Jim discusses the possibility of creating a lowest common denominator for wallet interoperability in Bitcoin. Jim expresses concerns about losing intra-client HD compatibility for BIP32 wallets, which could cause vendor lock-in for users. Gregory, however, argues that interoperability at this level is not possible in general, except as an explicit compatibility feature, and that it is not a huge loss if it is not achieved. He points out that the structure of the derivation defines and constrains functionality, so wallets cannot be structure compatible unless they have the same features and behavior with respect to key management. Moreover, even if their key management were compatible, there are many other factors that go into making a wallet portable between systems, such as metadata. Gregory suggests that supporting a compatibility mode where a wallet has just a subset of features that work when loaded into different systems could be possible but doubted that it would be widely used. He argues that the decision to use that mode comes at the wrong time and that heavily constraining functionality to get another result is too high a price to pay. Gregory concludes that calling it "vendor lock-in" is overblown because if someone wants to change wallets, they can transfer the funds. Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin core developer and open-source evangelist, also received the email.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T21:24:43.096541+00:00