Author: Stephen 2015-06-06 03:20:38
Published on: 2015-06-06T03:20:38+00:00
Kristov Atlas has proposed a draft of a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) to standardize the sorting of transaction inputs and outputs for privacy and security reasons. This proposal is aimed at reducing the discernible blockchain fingerprint of wallet clients and preventing them from leaking private information about their users. Currently, there is no standard for Bitcoin wallet clients when ordering transaction inputs and outputs. The proposed solution recommends deterministic lexicographical sorting using hashes of previous transactions and output indices to sort transaction inputs, as well as value and locking scripts to sort transaction outputs. However, Stephen provided feedback on Kristov's explanation of sorting, suggesting that it could be shortened and clarified by simply stating that the transaction IDs of inputs should be compared as uint256 integers. Additionally, Stephen mentioned the malleability of input transaction IDs that could cause inputs to be ordered in a non-standard way, which would invalidate the signatures. Although not a huge issue, he suggested using normalized TXIDs or sorting based on the previous outputs that each of the inputs are spending. These both require information that may not be readily available, and normalized transaction IDs are not fully developed yet. After integrating feedback from a wider audience, Kristov aims to have the BIP assigned with a number and accepted into https://github.com/bitcoin/bips.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T22:14:56.789925+00:00