Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Schnorr signatures BIP

From: Andrew Poelstra <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2018 13:05:59 +0000

On Wed, Sep 05, 2018 at 08:26:14AM -0400, Erik Aronesty wrote:
> Why would you call it FUD?   All the weird hemming and hawing about it is
> really strange to me.  The more I look into it and speak to professors
> about i, the more it seems "so trivial nobody really talks about it".
> 
> 1. Generate an M of N shared public key (done in advance of signing ....
> this gets you the bitcoin address)
> 2. Generate signature fragments (this can be done offline, with no
> communication between participants)
> 
> Detailed explanation with code snippets:
> 
> https://medium.com/@simulx/an-m-of-n-bitcoin-multisig-scheme-e7860ab34e7f
>

The hemming and hawing is because you've been repeatedly told that your
scheme doesn't work, and to please implement it in some computer algebra
system so that you can see that (or so we can see where your mistake is),
and you instead continue to post incomplete/incoherent copies of the same
thing across multiple mediums - Reddit, this list, Bitcointalk, Medium,
etc ad nauseum.

It's distracting and offensive to people who have spent a lot of time and
energy thinking about this stuff, and more importantly it causes confusion
in the public eye. Phrasings like "weird hemming and hawing" suggest that
we don't know/don't care about some insight you have, which is not true.
This is why your posts are FUD.

For example, in your linked post I looked at every single instance of the
character 'k' and *not one of them* defined the value 'k' from which 'R'
is derived in the signing procedure.

Of course there is no possible value, individual signers cannot learn 'R'
at signing time without interaction, and your whole scheme is broken. Given
the number of times you've been told this, I find it hard to believe that
this was an honest mistake.

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Poelstra
Research Director, Mathematics Department, Blockstream
Email: apoelstra at wpsoftware.net
Web:   https://www.wpsoftware.net/andrew

"Make it stop, my love; we were wrong to try
 Never saw what we could unravel in traveling light
 Nor how the trip debrides like a stack of slides
 All we saw was that time is taller than space is wide"
       --Joanna Newsom