Author: Thomas Voegtlin 2017-09-17 08:10:17
Published on: 2017-09-17T08:10:17+00:00
Pieter Wuille, a Bitcoin Core developer, has expressed concerns over the ambiguity of the Wallet Import Format (WIF) when used with Segregated Witness (SegWit) scripts. Wuille believes that the current WIF format is not acceptable to use with SegWit scripts and could cause "technological debt" by forcing wallets to try all possible scripts. He sees two options; either disable private key export in Electrum SegWit wallets until a common WIF extension has been agreed upon or define his own WIF extension for Electrum. Wuille argues that defining his own format makes sense for the xpub/xprv format because Electrum users need to share master public keys across wallets. However, it makes less sense for WIF because it's mostly used to import/sweep keys from other wallets. He would like to know what other wallet developers are going to do, especially Core.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T18:51:16.038691+00:00