Can you make it clear what the bold vs not-bold numbers mean? On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 4:56 PM Russell O'Connor via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 1:31 AM Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev < > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > >> >> That brings me to Matt's point: there is no need to do this right now. We >> can simply amend BIP173 to only permit length 20 and length 32 (and only >> length 20 for v0, if you like; but they're so far apart that permitting >> both shouldn't hurt), for now. Introducing the "new" address format (the >> one using an improved checksum algorithm) only needs to be there in time >> for when a non-32-byte-witness-program would come in sight. >> > > As a prerequisite to taproot activation, I was looking into amending > BIP173 as stated above. However after reviewing > https://gist.github.com/sipa/a9845b37c1b298a7301c33a04090b2eb#detection-of-insertion-errors > it seems that insertions of 5 characters or more is "safe" in the sense > that there is low probability of creating a valid checksum by doing so > randomly. > > This means we could safely allow witness programs of lengths *20*, 23, > 26, 29, *32*, 36, and 40 (or 39). These correspond to Bech32 addresses > of length *42*, 47, 52, 57, *62*, 68, and 74 (or 73). We could also > support a set of shorter addresses, but given the lack of entropy in such > short addresses, it is hard to believe that such witness programs could be > used to secure anything. I'm not sure what the motivation for allowing > such short witness programs was, but I'm somewhat inclined to exclude them > from the segwit address format. > > Given that we would only be able to support one of 39 or 40 byte witness > programs, it is sensible to choose to allow 40 byte witness programs to be > addressable. This is the maximum witness program size allowed by BIP 141. > > So my proposal would be to amend BIP173 in such a way to restrict "bc" and > "tb" segwit address formats to require witness programs be of size *20*, > 23, 26, 29, *32*, 36, or 40. Witness programs of other sizes (between 2 > and 40) would, of course, still be legal in accordance with BIP 141; > however they would be unaddressable by using this "bc" and "tb" prefix. > Another address format would be needed to support other witness sizes, > should the need ever arise. > > -- > Russell O'Connor > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev >