Author: Christophe Biocca 2015-09-05 16:48:41
Published on: 2015-09-05T16:48:41+00:00
The current situation regarding the BIP repository is not an accident, and more context can be found on Github. The cointypes being simple integers was how the code worked as shipped, so changing the semantics after the fact wasn't a possibility. Since the BIP repository did not want to constantly deal with updates unrelated to Bitcoin proper, it was decided to move that part of the standard to a repository willing to handle it.On September 5th, 2015, Jorge Timón replied to a message from Justus Ranvier via bitcoin-dev. Luke Dashjr had proposed modifying BIP 43 to refer non-Bitcoin purpose codes to the SLIP repository, which caused some concern. Justus asked what benefit would be created by delegating the BIP-43 namespace management to that specific company, and mentioned that moving purpose codes to a separate namespace adds complexity to its usage for no discernible benefit. Jorge agreed that the "namespace" defined in BIP43 was acceptable, but expressed concerns with BIP44's centralized registry control by a single company instead of having a way for different companies (or p2p chains like namecoin?) to maintain competing registries. He suggested using a code deterministically generated from the chain ID, completely removing the need for a registry in the first place.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T01:45:43.910019+00:00