Author: Jorge Timón 2013-02-25 09:41:26
Published on: 2013-02-25T09:41:26+00:00
On February 23, 2013, Roy Badami wrote to the bitcoin-development mailing list, suggesting that tools be created for users to manage key retirement and compromise. He stated that currently, if one suspects their keys may be compromised, they would have to create a new wallet and transfer coins from the old wallet to the new wallet. This process can be tedious and requires the user to make one or more payments from the old wallet to the new one. They also lose their address book and transaction history unless they keep the old wallet about. Badami suggested that there should be a big key compromise button in Bitcoin that would automatically transfer all coins to newly generated addresses, with an option of flagging compromised/retired addresses.Badami proposed that such functionality should be developed within the official client, and the first step would be to specify exactly what functionality is wanted. He acknowledged that deterministic wallets have many proponents but prefers having a bag of keys because old keys will routinely be retired, and their balances will automatically be transferred to newly generated keys. Finally, he wants a big panic button that allows him to automatically transfer all his coins to new addresses ASAP if he suddenly does something stupid, like accidentally typing his passphrase into his IRC window.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T10:12:57.722764+00:00