Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Presenting a BIP for Shamir's Secret Sharing of Bitcoin private keys

From: Matt Whitlock <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2014 04:29:26 -0400

On Tuesday, 22 April 2014, at 10:27 am, Jan Møller wrote:
> > >  - Please allow M=1. From a usability point of view it makes sense to
> > allow
> > > the user to select 1 share if that is what he wants.
> >
> > How does that make sense? Decomposing a key/seed into 1 share is
> > functionally equivalent to dispensing with the secret sharing scheme
> > entirely.
> >
> >
> I agree that it may look silly to have just one-of-one share from a
> technical point of view, but from an end-user point of view there could be
> reasons for just having one piece of paper to manage. If M can be 1 then
> the software/hardware doesn't have to support multiple formats,
> import/export paths + UI  (one for SIPA keys in one share, one for HD seeds
> in one share, one for SIPA keys + HD seeds in multiple shares).
> 
> Less complexity & more freedom of choice.

Alright. It's a fair argument. Do you agree with encoding M using a bias of -1 so that M up to and including 256 can be encoded in one byte?