Author: Moral Agent 2017-10-30 16:48:09
Published on: 2017-10-30T16:48:09+00:00
The discussion thread revolves around the security and verification of Bitcoin addresses. The idea of mapping a 25-byte address to 16 words from a 6000-word list is proposed as it would be easier for humans to verify than the long string of characters that make up an address. It is noted that any small change in the input should produce a significantly different output to ensure security, and displaying 16 words in a 4 x 4 grid with no visual distractions is recommended. For higher security keys, grinding an address with enough zeros at the beginning to be expressed by fewer words is suggested. The use of images to verify addresses is also discussed, but it is pointed out that our visual processing system subconsciously "corrects" visual input to what we expect to see, making it unreliable. Generating an image based on the bytes of an address is suggested, but it is noted that any small change to the text input produces a significantly different image, which may not be practical. It is highlighted that checking only the first few bytes of a Bitcoin address is insufficient to ensure its correctness, as it takes less than a second to generate a vanity address that matches the first few characters of an address. With Bech32 address, only the "bc1." prefix can be seen, making it difficult to visually differentiate between addresses. However, there are no proposed solutions to make the Bech32 address format more visually distinct.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T21:47:11.608394+00:00