Author: Aaron Voisine 2016-05-14 17:09:42
Published on: 2016-05-14T17:09:42+00:00
In a discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Andreas Schildbach explains that the idea behind BIP43 is to ensure that balance retrieval never changes so that the same balance can always be seen on "same BIP" wallets. Pavol Rusnak agrees with this statement. It is noted that even if a new BIPXX was used to define adding segwit chains to what were previously BIP43/44 wallets, the retrieval of a BIP44 wallet remains exactly the same as it did before. However, after upgrading an existing BIP44 wallet to a BIPXX wallet, it is no longer a BIP44 wallet and can only be recovered using BIPXX compatible wallet software. If a new purpose number YY is created for a new BIP that fits in the BIP43 framework, wallets that follow BIPYY may only contain segwit address chains, no standard P2PKH address chains. In response to Jonas Schnelli's comment about the lack of support for Bip39 import (cross-wallet) by Schildbachs android wallet, Electrum and Breadwallet, Aaron Voisine confirms that Breadwallet is BIP39 with the BIP43 purpose 0 derivation path, and he believes that Schildbachs wallet is as well. Electrum has its own format, but it is not clear if it supports sweeping other mnemonics and wallet layouts.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T05:20:37.597296+00:00