Author: Tamas Blummer 2014-03-27 07:09:06
Published on: 2014-03-27T07:09:06+00:00
During a meeting at the Inside Bitcoin Conference in Berlin, different opinions were expressed on how to use a hierarchy which could eventually be standardized for retail customers but not for corporate use. It was suggested to use a hash of the word "Bitcoin", "Litecoin", or "Dogecoin" instead of building a directory of magic numbers. At another meeting, Mike Hearn, Thomas V (Electrum), and Marek (Trezor) got together to ensure their BIP32 wallet structures would be compatible. They brainstormed to find a structure that is acceptable to everyone and ended up with "/m/cointype/reserved'/account'/change/n". The same seed can be written down once and meet all users' needs while still allowing some drift between what wallets support. Pieter made the point that you can't really encode how keys are meant to be used into just an HDW hierarchy and normally you'd need some metadata as well. However, interop between wallets is more important than arriving at the most perfect possible arrangement.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T16:03:24.931996+00:00