Re: [bitcoin-dev] Formosa --- proposed improvement upon BIP39

From: Keagan McClelland <keagan.mcclelland@gmail•com>
To: yurisvb@pm•me,
	 Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Formosa --- proposed improvement upon BIP39
Date: Fri, 19 May 2023 15:24:45 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CALeFGL3ywc3YiZ-JnaShGPyaKRjDyG4gs7N3SiV4OJudFAwYcg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <jQqInjh7VTC5byefTzENidJjigvRqf5Y7UvbrWjKPJykvhdlLETeglGE3zoAiVAxUyAXU8uWHsHEjJ0MHqqPTy4prgaIhgMyIrD9c6ZUuE0=@pm.me>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3259 bytes --]

Good day Yuri,

This is a very cool idea. After reviewing the repository it seems that
there lacks a BIP style specification for this, so it is possible that some
of my takeaways may not be correct but I figured I'd comment with some
observations anyway. Feel free to correct me where I've made a mistake.

I think to make an idea like this work it would be necessary for it to
"extend" BIP39 rather than "replace" it. What I mean by this is that BIP39
is heavily entrenched in the ecosystem and so in order for you to sidestep
the need to get everyone in the ecosystem to adopt a new standard, you'd
want this process to be able to output a standard BIP39 seed sequence. This
becomes even more important when you allow these different "themes" that
are mentioned later in the document. The notion of themes practically
precludes the standardization of the technique since customization really
is the antithesis of standardization.

The largest value proposition of these schemes is that it allows
significant wallet interoperability. This is achieved if process for
translating these phrases to the underlying wallet seed is deterministic.
Themes may prove to make this harder to solve. I also do not believe that
themes meaningfully increase the ability to remember the phrase: the fact
that the phrase has a valid semantic at all is a massive step up from an
undifferentiated sequence of words that is the current state of BIP39. The
benefits afforded by the themes here are little by comparison.

Overall, I think exploring this idea further is a good idea. However, there
may be concerns about whether the increased memorability is a good thing.
It would certainly make $5 wrench attacks more viable, not less. I can't
help but ask myself the question whether more Bitcoin is lost because of
seed phrases not being memorized, or because of social engineering
exercises used to scrape these phrases from the brains of users. I have a
hunch that loss is a larger problem than theft, but it is a very real
possibility that a wide deployment of this type of tech could change that.

Stay Inspired,
Keags

On Tue, May 2, 2023 at 6:05 AM Yuri S VB via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
> The following is a password format that improves upon BIP39 by allowing
> meaningful, themed sentences with a regular grammatical structure instead
> of semantically disconnected words, while keeping the same entropy/checksum
> and total bits/non-repeating leading digits ratios (of 32/1 and 11/4
> respectively).
>
> https://github.com/Yuri-SVB/formosa
>
> Anecdotal experiments suggest that less than one hour of moderate
> concentration is enough for long term memorization of 128 + 4 bits
> (equivalent to the 12 words standard of BIP39) if a theme of interest is
> employed.
>
> I hereby offer it to your scrutiny as a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal.
> Please don't hesitate to ask whatever issue about the project there might
> be.
>
> Faithfully yours, Yuri S VB.
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 4275 bytes --]