From: Matt Whitlock <bip@mattwhitlock•name>
To: bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Presenting a BIP for Shamir's Secret Sharing of Bitcoin private keys
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 10:10:38 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1894130.91FUH3Vu6n@crushinator> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANEZrP0WAMGV_ki3+9eFPaLQQVS7BJQ1c1c7KDuQatTeun-VwA@mail.gmail.com>
On Saturday, 29 March 2014, at 2:36 pm, Mike Hearn wrote:
> Right - the explanation in the BIP about the board of directors is IMO a
> little misleading. The problem is with splitting a private key is that at
> some point, *someone* has to get the full private key back and they can
> then just remember the private key to undo the system. CHECKMULTISIG avoids
> this.
The implication is that every director would want to retain the board's private key for himself but also would want to prevent every other director from successfully retaining the private key for himself, leading to a perpetual stalemate in which no director ever gets to retain the private key.
> I can imagine that there may be occasional uses for splitting a wallet seed
> like this, like for higher security cold wallets, but I suspect an ongoing
> shared account like a corporate account is still best off using
> CHECKMULTISIG or the n-of-m ECDSA threshold scheme proposed by Ali et al.
Multisig does not allow for the topology I described. Say the board has seven directors, meaning the majority threshold is four. This means the organization needs the consent of six individuals in order to sign a transaction: the president, the CFO, and any four of the board members. A 6-of-9 multisig would not accomplish the same policy, as then any six board members could successfully sign a transaction without the consent of the president or CFO. Of course the multi-signature scheme could be expanded to allow for hierarchical threshold topologies, or Shamir's Secret Sharing can be used to distribute keys at the second level (and further, if desired).
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2014-03-29 14:10 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 90+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2014-03-29 8:05 Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 8:34 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 8:44 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 8:51 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 8:54 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 16:54 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:37 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 9:08 ` Chris Beams
2014-03-29 9:31 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 11:16 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 11:54 ` Chris Beams
2014-03-29 13:27 ` Jeff Garzik
2014-03-29 13:36 ` Mike Hearn
2014-03-29 13:38 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 14:10 ` Matt Whitlock [this message]
2014-03-29 14:19 ` Jeff Garzik
2014-03-29 14:55 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 15:04 ` Mike Hearn
2014-03-29 14:28 ` Watson Ladd
2014-03-29 14:36 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-03-29 15:01 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 9:21 ` Chris Beams
[not found] <CACsn0ckScTWG4YxNCscxvtdsmcUkxtR2Gi-rdBs2HCkirPz5rA@mail.gmail.com>
2014-03-29 15:44 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 16:59 ` Alan Reiner
2014-03-29 17:19 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:52 ` Alan Reiner
2014-03-29 18:00 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 18:08 ` Alan Reiner
2014-03-29 18:10 ` Matt Whitlock
[not found] ` <CAAt2M18j7bGDsKouVw+e4j+FMiJ4vK6-sx+nrkwHyiKLqiH7Jg@mail.gmail.com>
2014-03-29 19:34 ` Natanael
2014-04-04 2:38 ` Jeff Garzik
2014-03-29 18:16 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 18:41 ` Alan Reiner
2014-03-29 17:28 ` Roy Badami
2014-03-29 17:42 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:51 ` Roy Badami
2014-03-29 17:28 ` devrandom
[not found] ` <1396113933.8809.91.camel@mimiz>
2014-03-29 17:38 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:46 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-03-29 19:49 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-03-29 17:48 ` devrandom
2014-03-29 17:51 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-03-29 17:56 ` devrandom
2014-04-03 12:41 Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-03 21:42 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 13:51 ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-04 14:14 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-04 16:05 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 16:25 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-04 16:36 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 17:08 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-04 17:16 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 17:51 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-04 18:53 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-04 16:03 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-08 0:33 ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-08 0:38 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-08 1:46 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-08 2:07 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-08 11:52 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-10 22:31 ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-22 8:06 ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22 8:11 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22 8:27 ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22 8:29 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22 8:39 ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22 8:43 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22 8:51 ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22 9:13 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22 11:50 ` Justin A
2014-04-22 8:35 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22 8:39 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 8:40 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22 8:43 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 8:47 ` Matt Whitlock
2014-04-22 8:50 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 15:32 ` Mark Friedenbach
2014-04-22 15:49 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 17:03 ` Mark Friedenbach
2014-04-22 17:07 ` Jan Møller
2014-04-22 18:29 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-22 18:46 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-23 5:33 ` Tamas Blummer
2014-04-23 6:16 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-05-05 19:36 ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-05-12 12:09 ` Jan Møller
2014-08-14 19:23 ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-22 13:37 ` Nikita Schmidt
2014-04-22 8:15 ` Gregory Maxwell
2014-04-22 8:49 ` Jan Møller
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=1894130.91FUH3Vu6n@crushinator \
--to=bip@mattwhitlock$(echo .)name \
--cc=bitcoin-development@lists$(echo .)sourceforge.net \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox