Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Bitcoin Discussion => Topic started by: Anonymous on May 16, 2011, 08:37:19 AM



Title: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: Anonymous on May 16, 2011, 08:37:19 AM
I dont know if its possible but it would be something if you had a separate block chain where you could send a bitcoin payment and it included a copy of your wallet.dat hashed into the transaction....

Could your bitcoin client access a wallet that was itself in another block chain ?

It might be a good way to have a decentralised ewallet where you give a website the location of the wallet file and it can read the balance. That means youd never have to deposit coins with a website and wouldnt need to trust them with your coins. You could easily move from service to service without worrying about hackers accessing your coins.

When you want to use your ewallet you just transfer coins to the block chain which would include a small fee to pay for miners.




Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: Nesetalis on May 16, 2011, 08:51:19 AM
er... and completely destroy any potential security benefits of keeping your wallet private? :p


Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: Anonymous on May 16, 2011, 09:28:21 AM
er... and completely destroy any potential security benefits of keeping your wallet private? :p

If you transfer bitcoins to an ewallet the site controls your coins.


Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: vuce on May 16, 2011, 09:32:53 AM
er... and completely destroy any potential security benefits of keeping your wallet private? :p
it could be encrypted? I think this is a pretty clever idea...


Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: Nesetalis on May 16, 2011, 09:42:44 AM
encryption can be cracked. And if there is enough money in it, it might be worth attempting.


Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: vuce on May 16, 2011, 09:49:55 AM
encryption can be cracked. And if there is enough money in it, it might be worth attempting.
it can be made as secure as bitcoin itself. Anyway, there would still be no reliable way of telling which wallets contain large amounts of bitcoin...


Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: Pieter Wuille on May 16, 2011, 09:50:17 AM
I you're going to store your wallet in the block chain (only its keys, the transactions are there anyway), encrypted with a passphrase, I think you're better off using an idea that suggested here earlier: use the passphrase as random seed for generating your keys... no need to store anything anywhere, and exactly the same level of security.


Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: vuce on May 16, 2011, 09:51:43 AM
I you're going to store your wallet in the block chain (only its keys, the transactions are there anyway), encrypted with a passphrase, I think you're better off using an idea that suggested here earlier: use the passphrase as random seed for generating your keys... no need to store anything anywhere, and exactly the same level of security.
haven't seen that one, that's also pretty neat...


Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: Nesetalis on May 16, 2011, 09:52:48 AM
the larger the wallet, the more keys.. the more keys, the more transactions.. the more likely for the wallet to contain greater sums of money.. and at the very least, you could watch a wallet you've cracked, and wait for it to have a greater sum of money.


Title: Re: Could you backup your wallet in a block chain ?
Post by: vuce on May 16, 2011, 09:54:12 AM
the larger the wallet, the more keys.. the more keys, the more transactions.. the more likely for the wallet to contain greater sums of money.. and at the very least, you could watch a wallet you've cracked, and wait for it to have a greater sum of money.
incoming transactions don't generate extra keys, afaik, so larger wallet would actually mean more money spent. Anyway, sipa's suggestion is much simpler.