Published on: 2015-09-06T02:09:52+00:00
In September 2015, a discussion took place on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list regarding the maintenance of competing registries for different companies and P2P chains. Some argued that the current centralized registries were acceptable as long as they didn't rely on having only one registry or having the same values for the same chains. However, others believed that BIP44's centralized registry control by a single company was not acceptable and proposed using a code deterministically generated from the chain ID instead. This proposal was seen as retro-compatible and provided securely unique IDs without the need for a centralized registry. It was suggested to start a Chain IDs BIP.The BIP repository made a decision to move part of the standard to a separate repository due to the constant updates unrelated to Bitcoin proper. On September 5th, 2015, a conversation between Jorge Timón and Justus Ranvier on the bitcoin-dev mailing list addressed concerns about delegating the BIP-43 namespace management to a specific company (SatoshiLabs). Justus questioned the benefit of this delegation and proposed using purpose codes matching the BIP number instead. He also expressed concerns with BIP44's centralized registry control and suggested using a code deterministically generated from the chain ID as a solution.Luke Dashjr, a Bitcoin Core Developer, expressed concerns about polluting the BIP repository with non-Bitcoin related specifications in response to a proposal to add HD generation of keypairs from a single seed for non-conflicting uses. Justus Ranvier countered by stating that intentionally making a useful technology less useful due to difficulties in assigning non-colliding numbers was a strange approach to software engineering. Justus Ranvier is associated with the Open Bitcoin Privacy Project, which promotes financial privacy and anonymity through the use of Bitcoin.On June 30, 2015, Justus Ranvier proposed a Bitmessage address derivation method based on BIP-43 developed by Monetas. This method allows Bitmessage users to generate addresses from a seed, providing eternal key backups and enabling future use cases. Monetas proposed this method as a BIP to reserve a purpose code. The proposal was made on the bitcoin-dev mailing list and included links to the relevant GitHub pages and contact details.Overall, the discussions on the bitcoin-dev mailing list revolved around the management of purpose codes, registry control, and the benefits and drawbacks of different approaches to maintain competing registries for different companies and P2P chains.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T14:09:53.705304+00:00