Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Project Development => Topic started by: locksley on December 06, 2013, 04:16:46 AM



Title: Convert addresses to Identicons
Post by: locksley on December 06, 2013, 04:16:46 AM
I got tired of seeing raw Bitcoin addresses, they can be hard to differentiate, whether you're a consumer or a developer.

Here's a little project we made that converts public addresses into unique identicons by hashing the public addresses.

e.g. 1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX converts to

http://identico.in/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX

It has a simple api endpoint, or you can fork the repo and host it yourself. Enjoy!

http://identico.in/


Title: Re: Convert addresses to Identicons
Post by: t3a on December 06, 2013, 05:16:14 AM
This is 7 pixels tall by 7 pixels wide and symmetric meaning you have 28 independent bits and 12 bits for the color I'm guessing. This adds up to 2^40 possible images.

Generating 2^40 of these seems pretty feasible. Is there a chance a malicious entity could pretend to be someone else?


Title: Re: Convert addresses to Identicons
Post by: Boussac on December 07, 2013, 11:15:25 AM
Same question: I fail to see how the entropy of a bitcoin address could fit in such a small representation. That is unless you use firstbits but that works only for funded addresses.


Title: Re: Convert addresses to Identicons
Post by: t3a on December 07, 2013, 07:03:47 PM
There are 2^160 possible Bitcoin addresses. If you make it so each square is either one of 31 colors or off, then you have 5 bits per block. Along with that, make it 9x5 and symmetrical so you have 4x5 unique squares. 2^(5*32) = 2^160.

Basically the solution is to give each block a unique color. With this fix, you could allow addresses to be scanned by smartphone apps without even requiring a link back to the address hosted on your website.


Title: Re: Convert addresses to Identicons
Post by: virtualmaster on December 07, 2013, 09:02:53 PM
Hmmm. May be convert the address to a fractal geometry. like a mandelbrot.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Mandel_zoom_00_mandelbrot_set.jpg