Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: jcb01 on January 30, 2020, 09:07:06 AM



Title: Transfer ownership of a Pubkey to a new owner.
Post by: jcb01 on January 30, 2020, 09:07:06 AM
From the basic understanding of bitcoin,
it involves a locking script and an redeem script( a owner of particular pubkey can unlock with his priv key if he produces a valid signature)
My question/thought is:
Can it be possible to have a Blockchain ledger with public key as the commodity(with locking and unlocking script)
This way i can transfer ownershuip a Public Key A using it's priv. key A to the owner of Pubkey B. So the Privkey B owner is also the owner of PubKey A.

i was thinking like this because it can make Bitcoin more anonymous.However i have no technical knowledge and would like to see if my analysis/thinking is wrong.
Thanks!




Title: Re: Transfer ownership of a Pubkey to a new owner.
Post by: jackg on January 30, 2020, 09:09:29 AM
I think it would be very restrictive doing it that way but that is somewhat the basis of a smart contract (loosely). Instead of owning and signing the funds you own the contract for the funds (where one applies).


Title: Re: Transfer ownership of a Pubkey to a new owner.
Post by: pooya87 on January 30, 2020, 09:46:16 AM
public key is not a stand alone thing to transfer to someone else. it is the second (and public) part of a duo in the asymmetric cryptography scheme. private and public keys are inseparable so you can only generate a public key from that private key.

This way i can transfer ownershuip a Public Key A using it's priv. key A to the owner of Pubkey B. So the Privkey B owner is also the owner of PubKey A.

even if it was possible you still have to provide a mechanism and some sort of proof (like signatures that are already in use) to prove the ownership change. so there is no difference here.


Title: Re: Transfer ownership of a Pubkey to a new owner.
Post by: jcb01 on January 30, 2020, 02:37:12 PM
I imagined there would be some way to trade pubkey ownsership.From the discussions above it's clear it's not possible.
Thank you everyone for the response!  :)


Title: Re: Transfer ownership of a Pubkey to a new owner.
Post by: Abdussamad on January 30, 2020, 09:36:58 PM
Of course it's possible. It's the same as sending someone a message. It's just not secure because I too have a copy of the key pair and it'll be a race to see who can move the coins first. Private keys are called private for a reason. You don't share them!

Now if I can somehow prove to you that I don't have another copy of the private key then it will be secure. Being able to prove you don't know something is very hard though :) Opendime came up with a concept around it that relies on hardware features. But I'm sure someone will come up with a way to crack an opendime without it being apparent that he has done so.

Another concept is to lock the coins in a multisig address and exchange unsigned transactions with the other party. This is the idea behind lightning.