Author: Arthur Chen 2016-06-28 08:31:51
Published on: 2016-06-28T08:31:51+00:00
Based on previous crypto analysis, it has been stated that the actual security of SHA512 is not significantly higher than SHA256. Thus, there have been discussions about considering SHA3 as a potential alternative. In response to an email sent by Jonas Schnelli via bitcoin-dev, there was a debate about the use of SHA512_HMAC in BIP32 and whether it was necessary to introduce SHA512 in the mix. Jonas Schnelli suggested that a single SHA512_HMAC operation is cheaper and simpler than two SHA256_HMAC operations, but it was argued that SHA256_HMAC is also not used by the current p2p & consensus layer. Bitcoin-Core uses it for HTTP RPC auth and Tor control. Ultimately, there were no clear pros and cons identified for using SHA512_HMAC over SHA256_HMAC.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T18:53:18.181778+00:00