Human-readable bitcoin hashes

[crazyideas21]

Hash strings are everywhere on the bitcoin network, e.g. transaction IDs, block IDs and wallet addresses. They are hard to read, recognize and remember, especially if you're dealing with lots of them every day. Moreover, it's difficult to verbally reference these strings to another person.

I have developed a Chrome extension turns any hash string into four short English words:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/happyhashes/nopdpmfhmopklpghdlakpbcjbdjhflhn

For instance, a bitcoin wallet address "13RWC...dLrkr" is transformed into "@_Dozen_Concord_Flavor_Hint". You can talk about it with a colleague by saying the four words, rather than the long string. Any verbal communications as such are clear and convenient.

Also, four words are easier to read, recognize and remember. For example, a suspicious payout address simply stand out, making it faster to spot any recurring patterns.

This extension is ideal for developers and researchers who have to deal with lots of bitcoin hashes on a regular basis. I'd like to share the first version of it and seek my fellow researchers/developers' opinion, before I expand the project.

(Note that a hash corresponds to a unique combination of four English words, but one such combination may be mapped to multiple hashes. It is unlikely that you will run into collisions, which happen once in 24,000^4 hashes.)

[cbeast]

  really?!

[grondilu]

Where did you get your 24,000-words list?

[crazyideas21]

For this current version, I'm using the American English dictionary that is built into Unix. Only words with at most seven letters are selected.

[2weiX]

that is very awesome.

[grondilu]

I can't believe this has not been done already.  I had no idea the risk of collision could be that low with just four english words.

[BkkCoins]

Well, you also need to be sure you're using identical dictionaries. So best have a fixed url to a standardized wordlist that doesn't change so devs can create other tools. Any dictionary built in to linux can easily change so isn't reliable for this.

[grondilu]

Well, you also need to be sure you're using identical dictionaries. So best have a fixed url to a standardized wordlist that doesn't change so devs can create other tools. Any dictionary built in to linux can easily change so isn't reliable for this.

Indeed.  Similar issues occured with electrum, but it is not that important here since this is not a critical application.  It's only a convenient way to display bitcoin addresses.  One should not rely on it too hard.

[crazyideas21]

The word list is embedded as an array in a javascript within the plugin itself.

[grondilu]

In the "details" section tab, I'm told that your extension can access my data on all websites.

What for?

[crazyideas21]

The extension has to access the data in all tabs. From this raw data, the extension searches for hashes, converts them into English words, and updates the pages accordingly. You can actually inspect the javascript source code in Chrome's extension directory. The extension does not make any network connections. No information ever leaves your computer.