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Chris Liss 2y ago

Suggestion for #[0]​ for bitcoin scaling:

TLDR: figure out a way for a person’s private key to be information he already knows that no one else could guess, or information hidden in plain sight. Something he would not forget the way a person who grew up in a city would always know its streets and avenues, even decades later.

The biggest hurdle to self-custody IMO is the terrifying prospect of securing one’s keys. Everyone has much much more than 256 bits of unique knowledge that, barring brain injury, they would never forget. Solve that piece, and solve the scaling problem.

https://chrisliss.substack.com/p/the-adoption-dilemma

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Russ Miller 2y ago

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/mastering-bitcoin-2nd/9781491954379/ch04.html

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Chris Liss 2y ago

What’s the upshot in relation to my suggestion?

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Russ Miller 2y ago

I don’t know much bitcoin, but it appears that you need a mathematically rigorous algorithm with similar entropy to produce your phrase (so you can’t just pick words that might mean something to you, from the Electrum page) but that “easier to remember” is being worked on in the wallet space. If you care to it appears you can dig in pretty deep in how it works.

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Chris Liss 2y ago

Yes, it has to be 256 bits, or 64 hexadecimals or 24 words out of something like 4,096. But is there some fundamental reason you couldn’t expand the words to include the entire English language (you can do this with passphrases already)? In which case, my idea would be to create sufficient entropy out of personal items/facts someone already knows.

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Russ Miller 2y ago

I thought maybe there were math reasons (that I don’t understand) but it might just be: “It is not safe to invent your own seed phrase because humans are bad at generating randomness. The best way is to allow the wallet software to generate a phrase which you write down.” https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Seed_phrase

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Russ Miller 2y ago

Also entropy is not the same as bits, I believe it’s a measure of randomness

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Russ Miller 2y ago

Oh now is entropy IS in bits, sorry.