Author: Gary Rowe 2015-03-12 17:42:57
Published on: 2015-03-12T17:42:57+00:00
When selecting which HD wallet structures to support, Jim and the author considered several factors. They found that BIP39 is a good standard list that mandates distinct words, consistent spelling, and possible foreign language variants. Additionally, BIP32 and BIP44 allow for maximum compatibility with other wallets. However, including a date in the "wallet words" themselves is open to spoofing, so they opted for a timestamp as optional external metadata. They decided to use the number of days elapsed since the Bitcoin genesis block with a modulo 97 checksum appended to mitigate potential user error when entering a timestamp.If a user has no timestamp, blank is the only alternative, which is interpreted as the earliest possible BIP32 date. When restoring a wallet, the user must select where the "wallet words" came from (e.g. MultiBit HD, Trezor, Mycelium, etc). Although users may assume they can type their "wallet words" into any wallet and retrieve their bitcoins, it is up to developers to make this a reality. The author believes that they are close to achieving this goal.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T18:14:23.448490+00:00