Author: Pieter Wuille 2017-05-07 21:39:14
Published on: 2017-05-07T21:39:14+00:00
On March 20, 2017, Pieter Wuille requested a BIP number assignment for the bech32 proposal. The proposal aims to introduce a commonly recognizable format that has good properties for all use cases, even if that means being suboptimal in certain aspects for some. Wuille addressed concerns about transmitting addresses via voice, stating that it's certainly not the most important way through which addresses are communicated or verified, but he is trying to address all places where humans interact with addresses. He also mentioned that QR codes can be made more compact, but that is not the goal of the BIP. In response to Lucas Ontivero's question about the need for a new type of address in the future, Wuille explained that it's likely that new types of outputs that may be introduced in the future will most likely not be a simple constant byte sequence that can be computed directly from addresses, but need some processing by the sender. Wuille believes that such outputs, if ever introduced on a wide scale, should ideally not be representable as existing address types, as that could lead to confusion and lost privacy and funds.Wuille also responded to Andreas Schildbach's comment about non-English speaking users, assuming that Peter Todd was talking about cases where English speakers are interacting with non-native English speakers, who may know how to pronounce numbers or alphabetical characters, but not all special characters. In general, people have contributed two new reference implementations (Haskell and Rust), and a C++ and Go one are underway.
Updated on: 2023-05-20T01:04:33.923974+00:00