[bitcoin-dev] A DNS-like decentralized mapping for wallet addresses?

From: Damian Williamson <willtech@live•com.au>
To: Douglas Roark <joroark@vt•edu>,
	Sjors Provoost <sjors@sprovoost•nl>,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
	<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: [bitcoin-dev] A DNS-like decentralized mapping for wallet addresses?
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2017 09:05:34 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <PS2P216MB01790A2EC251507D2739360E9D0F0@PS2P216MB0179.KORP216.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1085B203-DB5E-42AB-A9F3-467D09246314@sprovoost.nl>

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There is no reason it should not be easily possible to develop a Bitcoin wallet that has an integrated name to address mapping feature. It might be a good idea for a software product, it could even be based on Bitcoin Core. There is no specific reason that people wanting that sort of feature could not use it. In fact, you could map names, strings, email addresses, it could be very flexible.

Relying on an additional service like DNS which is flexible enough to handle the job, does introduce an additional availability risk. There is no additional privacy risk provided each mapped name or address is only used once to send/receive one payment unless you directly use something personally identifiable like an email address which could be used to map bitcoin addresses to an individual. Personally, I am not concerned about privacy so much but can understand that some highly value their privacy.

If you get it right it will be a service better than namecoin transacting in Bitcoin. If you think that is valuable, go for it.

Regards,

Damian Williamson

________________________________
From: bitcoin-dev-bounces@lists•linuxfoundation.org <bitcoin-dev-bounces@lists•linuxfoundation.org> on behalf of Sjors Provoost via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Sent: Monday, 18 December 2017 10:26 PM
To: Douglas Roark; Bitcoin Protocol Discussion
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] A DNS-like decentralized mapping for wallet addresses?

Have you thought about combining this with BIP-47? You could associate payment codes with email via DNS.

It would be nice if there was a way to get rid of the announcement transaction in BIP-47 and establish a shared secret out of bound. That would simplify things, at the cost of an additional burden of storing more than an HD seed to recover a wallet that received funds this way.

Perhaps the sender can email to the recipient the information they need to retrieve the funds. The (first) transaction could have a time locked refund in it, in case the payment code is stale.

Sjors

> Op 1 dec. 2017, om 04:08 heeft Douglas Roark via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> het volgende geschreven:
>
> On 2017/11/30 14:20, mandar mulherkar via bitcoin-dev wrote:
>> I was wondering in terms of mass adoption, instead of long wallet
>> addresses, maybe there should be a DNS-like decentralized mapping
>> service to provide a user@crypto address?
>
> A few years ago, I was part of an effort with Armory and Verisign to
> make something similar to what you're describing.
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-wiley-paymentassoc-00 is where you can
> find the one and only official draft. I worked on a follow-up with some
> changes and some nice appendices, explaining some nice tricks one could
> use to make payment management flexible. For various reasons, it never
> got published. I think it's an interesting draft that could be turned
> into something useful. Among other things, it was able to leverage BIP32
> and allow payment requests to be generated that automatically pointed
> payees to the correct branch. DNSSEC may have some issues but, AFAIK,
> it's as the easiest way to bootstrap identity to a common, reasonably
> secure standard.
>
> --
> ---
> Douglas Roark
> Cryptocurrency, network security, travel, and art.
> https://onename.com/droark
> joroark@vt•edu
> PGP key ID: 26623924
>
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> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev

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