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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: johoe on December 03, 2016, 11:42:58 AM



Title: Multisig transactions with private key "1"
Post by: johoe on December 03, 2016, 11:42:58 AM
I noticed that there are a lot of 2 of 3 multisig transactions where one key has the private key 1. This makes them effectively 1 of 2 multisig, although I think the owner isn't aware of this.   Does anyone know, who is creating these?

Here is an example:
https://blockchain.info/tx/9aebe8dedd172d3662d0713ec94dff3ede1efca9b315b52be087872d06a93dc3

There is only a little address reuse.  I count over 1000 different addresses in the last three months.


Title: Re: Multisig transactions with private key "1"
Post by: franky1 on December 03, 2016, 01:22:05 PM
no you are reading it wrong

the number is NOT a count of signatories. it is simply a flag to easily see type of address.. not how many are involved

a multisig is where you can select any public keys as the authoriser/signatory. whether its two addresses or twenty addresses.
but they combine to make a multisig address beginning with 3... always 3 no matter how many are involved

that multisig is then not forced to only pay out to only other multisig addresses. they can pay out to individual addresses aswell

in short any multisig with any number of signatories will always be a 3address. individual permissionless addresses begin with a 1.

what you looked at has nothing to do with how many signatories are involved by the number at the start.

1 and 3 are fixed recognisable flags.. not signatory counts

EG
if 3 was an M = multisig and 1 was an S=single then the rule still applies.


Title: Re: Multisig transactions with private key "1"
Post by: johoe on December 04, 2016, 02:38:17 PM
Okay, amacllin noted these transactions already in August:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1575527.0

But nobody has a good explanation why these exists.


Title: Re: Multisig transactions with private key "1"
Post by: franky1 on December 04, 2016, 06:28:57 PM
Okay, amacllin noted these transactions already in August:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1575527.0

But nobody has a good explanation why these exists.


ok i see what your getting at now. i thought u were asking a noob technical question. sorry.
seems your asking a psychological/social question

here is the thing.
knowing why/who wants to fund a certain address or adds a certain address as one of the multisig qualifiers is like asking why/who wants to buy banana's from walmart.

no one will give a definite answer. but your asking the wrong questions

for instance when it utilises / spams
https://blockchain.info/address/1BgGZ9tcN4rm9KBzDn7KprQz87SZ26SAMH
the KNOWN address where the privkey is literally not a long garbled seed of words/hex characters but simply "1"

that particular address had a tag on blockchain.info advertising a scam/virus.

in short it was trying to advertise a "bitcoin manual mining helper" scam

so someone used their multisig added the scam advert address.. spent some funds where the known address appears in the tx as either an input or output. then put the rest of its funds back into another multisig.

many people have done this, where they either tag their own address with something (scam/business/service) and then send small amounts
to another address. or send amounts to another address thats been tagged

though this is not the definite answer it does explain things.

another explanation is that the person with the multisig is simply testing things. so doesnt actually require a third address involved in a multisig. and just threw in the known address just for the sake of it.

its not a security risk to that person because the other addresses secure the multisig. a hacker still needs atleast one of the other private keys to break the multisig. so cant break it just looking at blockchain data.