Published on: 2018-05-04T08:23:21+00:00
In a discussion on the Bitcoin Development mailing list, Paul Brown proposed a new BIP32 derivation path that supports a single or multi-signature and multi-coin wallet from a single master seed. The proposal combines BIP44 and BIP45, addressing issues with BIP44's lack of clarity in terms of address format, representation of single-sig or multi-sig wallets, number of cosigners, and collision prevention on the same address index. Brown suggests using bech32 serialized addresses and extending the derivation path below coin type to represent the address format. He proposes creating a separate specification similar to SLIP-0044 to define the list of address formats and derivation path values, allowing for future address formats to be easily supported. Clark Moody suggests using the xpub serialization format described in SLIP-0032 as an alternative solution, which includes the derivation path within the xpub itself and uses Bech32 for encoding. Moody argues that this solves the bootstrapping problem and avoids the requirement for users to know the specific BIP number. Brown responds by acknowledging that his initial encoding was incorrect and suggests further extending the derivation path based on the coin type value. He believes a separate spec can be created to support different address formats without requiring new BIPs. The proposal includes several links to other related Bitcoin Improvement Proposals and discussions on addressing collisions and separating cosigners in the derivation path.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T22:53:40.079698+00:00