Author: Chris Belcher 2019-12-24 17:06:01
Published on: 2019-12-24T17:06:01+00:00
The author of the context has been experimenting with descriptors and finds them nice to work with. They suggest that descriptors should become the standard for master public keys, but there is a downside. Users cannot easily copy-paste them to create a watch-only wallet because the descriptors contain parentheses and commas which prevent highlighting by double-clicking, and the syntax may appear complicated to new users.The author proposes an obvious solution: to base64 encode the descriptors. This would allow users to obtain a text blob as the master public key without unnecessary details. Developers could also easily decode base64 for use in development. However, a complication arises with the descriptor checksum. If there are typos in the base64 text, it may decode incorrectly and cause errors in the descriptor, which could be problematic for the checksum. The proposed solution is to base64 encode the descriptor without the checksum and attach the checksum to the end of the base64 text.These ideas were not original to the author, but came from discussions with achow101.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T21:26:12.284826+00:00