Does M of N multisig work with random recipient?

[slothbag]

Can anyone lend their crypto expertise.. is it possible to create a M of N multisig transaction with say 50 participants and have them send coins to an address that no one can spend from, then choose one of the 50 to be the recipient and allow the remaining 49 to sign over the funds and the final recipient decodes the priv key to spend.

This needs to happen over a trustless p2p system like bitcoin..

Questions:
* How to create a priv key/pub key that none of the 50 can spend from
* Does the 50 participants have to sign one by one in a specific order to create the key?

[1714782046]

1714782046

[fellowtraveler]

This isn't a complete answer, but FYI I believe 20 is the max (not 50.)

[theymos]

That's definitely not possible with Script, which is deterministic. I very much doubt that it's possible in any other way without a trusted third party, voting, etc.

[slothbag]

What about outside of bitcoin using PKI in general?  Is it possible for 50 random people to create a shared key that no single person can control, and eventually with 49 people giving their signatures/keys to the 50th so #50 can access the priv key?

[CIYAM]

What you could do to accomplish this would be to create some software that divided an SHA256 hash into 16 + 50 characters sending the first 16 and one of the other 50 characters to each person (via PGP/GPG to be safe).

The order of who is sent which would of course need to be known (by all if you wanted to final recipient to be any one of the recipients).

The private key could then be re-created from this SHA256 hash.

[slothbag]

My thinking is to have something like a "pot" where people can send bitcoins.. and then a winner is chosen and everyone agrees to release the pot to the winner..

Would be perfect for a P2P poker engine.

[cbeast]

I was confused about multisig. Apparently BIP 11 only allows for up to 3 signatures due to block size limitations. Perhaps an offline scheme can offer this functionality. I can think of many practical applications including a blockchain based WoT, sweepstakes, and VAT.