Author: Pieter Wuille 2014-11-17 12:39:26
Published on: 2014-11-17T12:39:26+00:00
In an email exchange between Chris Pacia and Pieter Wuille, the topic of using stealth addresses with out-of-band communication in relation to HD wallets was discussed. Chris had expressed concern that if users were to use stealth addresses with out-of-band communication, the benefits of HD wallets would largely be lost and they would have to resort to making regular backups after every transaction instead of every 100. However, Pieter pointed out that it is inevitable for any wallet that offers functionality beyond just maintaining a balance and the ability to send coins to require backups. This is particularly important for wallets that need to list previous transactions with timestamps, history, metadata, messages sent using the payment protocol, and so on. He went on to explain that what HD wallets (or any type of deterministic derivation scheme) offer is the ability to separate secret data and public data. Users only need one safe backup of the master secret key, as all the rest can at most result in privacy loss and not lost coins.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T19:31:11.761657+00:00