Presenting a BIP for Shamir's Secret Sharing of Bitcoin private keys

Author: Chris Beams 2014-03-29 09:21:16
Published on: 2014-03-29T09:21:16+00:00

• Combined Summary of all posts in thread
• Click here to read original discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list

Summary:

In a message sent to the Bitcoin-development mailing list, Matt Whitlock proposed a method for dividing a Bitcoin private key into shares using Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme. This allows the key to be reconstituted from any large subset of the shares without revealing information about the key from individual shares. Whitlock also proposed an encoding methodology to standardize transmission and storage of shares. The complete BIP can be found on GitHub and Whitlock invited comments, questions, or suggestions. However, there is no mention in the Motivation and Rationale sections of the BIP regarding use cases for when Shamir's Secret Sharing may be superior to multisig.

Updated on: 2023-06-08T17:14:15.514913+00:00