[RFC] Standard for private keys with birth timestamp



Summary:

The proposal is to encode keys data with a birth timestamp, using the '@' character as a separator. The reason for not incorporating this into key serialization such as BIP32 is because birth timestamps are generally a property of an address and not the key it is derived from. The proposed encoding is useful for non-extended standard serialized private keys and P2SH addresses. The chosen '@' character is not present in base58, hex, or base64 encodings used for key/script data. Although there is no checksum-protection for the timestamp, there is increased genericity. Additionally, the optional part is longer than using binary encoding, but human typing is already challenging enough.


Updated on: 2023-05-19T17:06:57.182895+00:00