This feels redundant to me; the payment protocol already has an expiration time.
On 09/27/2017 06:06 PM, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev wrote: > Re-use of old addresses is a major problem, not only for privacy, but also > operationally: services like exchanges frequently have problems with users > sending funds to addresses whose private keys have been lost or stolen; there > are multiple examples of exchanges getting hacked, with users continuing to > lose funds well after the actual hack has occured due to continuing deposits. > This also makes it difficult operationally to rotate private keys. I > personally > have even lost funds in the past due to people sending me BTC to addresses > that > I gave them long ago for different reasons, rather than asking me for fresh > one. > > To help combat this problem, I suggest that we add a UI-level expiration time > to the new BIP173 address format. Wallets would be expected to consider > addresses as invalid as a destination for funds after the expiration time is > reached. > > Unfortunately, this proposal inevitably will raise a lot of UI and terminology > questions. Notably, the entire notion of addresses is flawed from a user point > of view: their experience with them should be more like "payment codes", with > a > code being valid for payment for a short period of time; wallets should not be > displaying addresses as actually associated with specific funds. I suspect > we'll see users thinking that an expired address risks the funds themselves; > some thought needs to be put into terminology. > > Being just an expiration time, seconds-level resolution is unnecessary, and > may give the wrong impression. I'd suggest either: > > 1) Hour resolution - 2^24 hours = 1914 years > 2) Month resolution - 2^16 months = 5458 years > > Both options have the advantage of working well at the UI level regardless of > timezone: the former is sufficiently short that UI's can simply display an > "exact" time (though note different leap second interpretations), while the > latter is long enough that rounding off to the nearest day in the local > timezone is fine. > > Supporting hour-level (or just seconds) precision has the advantage of making > it easy for services like exchanges to use addresses with relatively short > validity periods, to reduce the risks of losses after a hack. Also, using at > least hour-level ensures we don't have any year 2038 problems. > > Thoughts? > > > > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
