bips icon indicating copy to clipboard operation
bips copied to clipboard

PSBT: Require compressed keys for BIP32 key fields

Open dr-orlovsky opened this issue 4 years ago • 4 comments

BIP32 does not work with uncompressed public key; thus, all BIP32-related fields must explicitly require that the public key for the map key value must be serialized in compressed format

dr-orlovsky avatar Apr 12 '21 11:04 dr-orlovsky

I'm actually not sure if that is strictly true. While xpubs are serialized with the compressed pubkey and BIP 32 uses the compressed pubkey in derivation, there is no specific mention of the compressed-ness of the derived key for actual use. Compressed keys are used as a convention, but I don't think they are required by BIP 32. Pubkeys can be easily un/compressed.

achow101 avatar Apr 13 '21 16:04 achow101

If we clearly see use of uncompressed keys as a bad practice, why we should not just update both standards specifying that non-compressed keys will be non-standard application for both BIP32 and PSBT?

dr-orlovsky avatar Apr 13 '21 16:04 dr-orlovsky

Note that there are some applications which use BIP 32 and produce uncompressed pubkeys. The one that comes to mind is Ledger devices.

achow101 avatar Apr 13 '21 16:04 achow101

They may continue doing so, but as a non-standard behavior. The idea of being "Standard" is about what devs will expect from API by default. It does not limit devs from what they can do in addition to that, but distinguishes recommended behavior / good practices.

dr-orlovsky avatar Apr 14 '21 16:04 dr-orlovsky

@dr-orlovsky, @achow101: What’s the status on this pull request?

murchandamus avatar Apr 26 '24 19:04 murchandamus

It's been 3 years, so I'm going to go ahead and NACK this for the reasons previously stated.

achow101 avatar Apr 26 '24 19:04 achow101