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From: Jonas Schnelli <dev@jonasschnelli•ch>
To: "Dana L. Coe" <dana.coe@bitlox•com>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hardware Wallet Standard
Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2016 13:34:35 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <57B44BCB.3010400@jonasschnelli.ch> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <D41B40FA-0C75-496D-937A-0DF733FB87E2@bitlox.com>


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Hi Dana

>> The URI scheme does not require any sorts of wallet app level
>> configuration (where the stdio/pipe approach would require to configure
>> some details about the used hardware wallet).
> 
> Hi everybody, just thought I’d throw my opinion in here.
> 
> The URI scheme is a nice idea, but this ignores the fact that hardware wallet vendors do most of the work on talking between the computer/mobile and the wallet on a lower level of communication. In the case of BitLox, the base protocol is Google’s ProtoBuf. The commands and transaction data is in a “schema” which is then encoded in different methods accessible via ProtoBuf (depending on the data being sent). The advantages of this protocol is that it can be implemented on a wide variety of platforms. (but that’s a whole 'nother discussion)
> 
> The URI would be handled waaaaay up in the specific application (such as the mytrezor wallet software or the various standalone wallets) - nowhere near the actual hardware communications layer.

This is maybe a question of the scope.
The BIP I'm proposing would make a clear interface cut between
wallet-with-unsigned-transaction and a signing-device (and maybe between
wallet-requires-pubkey, signing-device generate some pubkeys [or
non-hardened xpub]).

The detached-signing proposal does not duplicate work. It just moves the
current plugin design into a separate application. Plugins in security
and privacy critical wallet software is something that should probably
be avoided.

It's intentional at a high level to allow maximum flexibility at the
hardware interaction layer.

Your protobuf example is a good use-case. You could implement your
custom processes behind the URI scheme (which is probably way more
efficient then writing a couple of wallet plugins where you – at the end
– mostly don't control the deployment and the source-code).

Defining a standard on the hardware interaction layer is possible, but a
fairly different approach.

</jonas>


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  reply	other threads:[~2016-08-17 11:34 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2016-08-16 14:10 Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-16 14:48 ` Pavol Rusnak
2016-08-16 15:13   ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-16 15:21     ` Pavol Rusnak
2016-08-16 17:48 ` Jochen Hoenicke
2016-08-17  0:25   ` Thomas Kerin
2016-08-17  7:24     ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-17  7:40       ` Nicolas Bacca
2016-08-17 10:13       ` Dana L. Coe
2016-08-17 11:34         ` Jonas Schnelli [this message]
2016-08-17 17:06           ` Marek Palatinus
2016-08-18  6:54             ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-18  9:15               ` Marek Palatinus
2016-08-18  9:35                 ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-18  9:43                   ` Marek Palatinus
2016-08-18  9:49                     ` Jonas Schnelli
2016-08-18 10:23                       ` Nicolas Bacca
2016-08-24 10:31                         ` Thomas Kerin
2016-08-16 19:22 ` Luke Dashjr
2016-08-17  0:03   ` Thomas Daede
2016-08-16 23:36 ` Aiqin Li
2016-08-17  0:14   ` Peter Todd
2016-08-17  7:27     ` Nicolas Bacca
2016-08-17 18:36     ` Bryan Bishop
2016-08-22 16:50 ` Moral Agent
2016-08-28 23:14   ` Corey Haddad

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