Author: Kenneth Heutmaker 2016-05-14 17:37:02
Published on: 2016-05-14T17:37:02+00:00
When moving all funds to a new wallet, there is a high chance of losing funds if the old wallet has used more than 1000 addresses, which some wallets don't even create. In such cases, the wallet hierarchy standards specify how to walk an address chain, keep going until no more used keys are found within the lookup window. If a wallet leaves gaps that are too big, it's not compliant. If the sweeping wallet understands how the old wallet uses the hierarchy, it can be safely swept without a potential loss of funds.Wallets with more addresses take more time to process and most wallets do not offer moving funds to a new seed, which results in wrong security for the end-user. However, implementing it is straightforward if the wallet already implements BIP32, just a matter of knowing how the old wallet uses the hierarchy.Importing a wallet is tricky, especially cross-wallet imports, but if a wallet uses BIP32 HD, all of the hard code is already implemented. It's just a matter of stringing the correct sequence of steps together. TREZOR and KeepKey have developed strategies to prevent MITM attacks during seed recovery by asking for words in a random order or using a rotating substitution cipher. If the new hierarchy is under a separate purpose code as specified in BIP43, there is no need to create a new seed since the BIP44 hierarchy and the new hierarchy can extend from the same seed.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T05:21:08.859822+00:00