MinAddress : Now remember your addresses easily

[CIYAM]

@DannyHamilton

You seem to have missed the "tip address" argument to "address re-use" - if people had to go to a website in order to get a unique address to "send a tip" then very few people would ever actually get a tip (and I have had a few sent to my 1ciyam address over the years).

Another variation of the "tip address" is the "billboard sign" one (yes you could also put a QR code there but if the person doesn't have a camera then with this they can still "jot down the address" to find the full address later).

[1714250534]

1714250534

[1714250534]

1714250534

[1714250534]

1714250534

[inigthz]

Not bad. Will try it..

[CIYAM]

The thinking behind this is to make address (almost) mistake proof. So if someone changes the MinAddres 3fa5b-17yk to 3fa5d-17yk or 3fa5b-l7yk by mistake the chances of getting a full address is negligible.

1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU:2adfd

Hmm... you could put part or all of the normal address checksum in the MinAddress like the above.

[DannyHamilton]

I am trying to say that the issues which you have highlighted for address reuse are not very significant in case of Minaddress as people will be mostly be using these address for small transactions like tips/donations etc.

The issues I've highlighted are issues for small transactions like tips/donations etc.

You are mistaken. Address re-use significantly reduces both privacy and fungibility.

Significant even in cases when the address in question will never have the total BTC transaction amount more than 1 BTC in its entire lifetime?

Yes.

Who said anything about losing bitcoins.  The issue is lost privacy, and lost fungibility.  Not lost bitcoins.

Ok so you agree that address reuse does not impose any threat to loss of bitcoin.

Yes, we are in agreement that the issues have nothing to do with loss of security.

Furthermore, if anyone ever re-uses an address that they used in the past to send bitcoins to me, the bitcoins WILL be lost, since I delete the private keys after I spend the bitcoins that were received at an address.

I guess you can post your private keys on this forum before you discard them so that atleast someone benefits from the bitcoins and they are not lost forever.

I prefer to discourage re-use of bitcoins.  If I post my private keys, then the threat of the permanent loss of bitcoins from the economy is reduced.

Yes, but I don't know of a single one that lost bitcoins due to a typo. Every one of them that I know about lost bitcoins due to either:

I have seen cases where people replaced capital letter with small letter or vice versa leading to incorrect address.

This does not result in a valid address.  Unlike your MinAddress, bitcoins have a checksum built in to the address.  It is extremely difficult to make a typo and end up with a valid address.

• Being given the wrong bitcoin address by the receiver

MinAddress can help in this case to an extent as a random change in MinAddress will most likely result in invalid error rather than giving a different full address.

A random change in a Bitcoin Address has a much lower chance of resulting in a valid address than a random change in a MinAddress.  The problem is, for example, when someone gives out an address and then later realizes that they took the address from the "sent transactions" section of their wallet instead of the "receive" section.

[CIYAM]

The issues I've highlighted are issues for small transactions like tips/donations etc.

Seriously? Do you think that someone needs to go to someone's website or contact them in order to just give a tip?

I can understand if you are offering a "service" that it would make sense but if you are just tipping someone for a great post then I do not see the harm at all.

[BurtW]

You are misunderstanding the privacy/fungibility issue especially with respect to static donation addresses or published static addresses of any kind.  It is not the privacy of the entity posting the static address that is the issue - by posting a static address easily tied to your identity you obviously don't care about your own personal financial privacy.  The issue at hand is the privacy of everyone who ever gives a donation to the easily identified transaction node you have created.  Now realize that since your easily identified node can be used to possibly compromise the identities of every other node that ever sends you a donation then by extrapolation every easily identifiable static transaction node reduces the overall privacy of the entire Bitcoin ecosystem.

Now, while this system wide loss of privacy is an issue in and of itself, it is the long term threat to the very fungibility of Bitcoin posed by this system wide reduction in privacy that most concerns me an others here.
  
Proper education should lead to the total demise of static addresses because properly educated people will never send BTC to any static addresses, thus making the publishing of static addresses of any kind obsolete.  In other words everyone who cares about the long term fungibility and therefore viability of this grand experiment should demand a new address for every transaction, every time.

All donation addresses should be, as you said, implemented by a widget that displays a new address every time it is hit.  All periodic payments (including and especially mining payouts) should be handled by deterministic payment address generation.  All Bitcoin users should demand a new address for every transaction.  In order to compensate for the sloppy privacy policies of others please use coinjoin or other coin mixing transactions when you must send to any static address.

[Edit:  Thinking about this donation address issue some more I think a possible solution would be to generate an xpriv/xpub key pair, create a widget based on the xpub key that displays the first Bitcoin address for the first public key in the sequence until that address receives a donation, then start displaying the Bitcoin address of the next public key in the xpub sequence, etc.  This way a new Bitcoin address is published until it gets used and once it gets used it gets retired.  The entity receiving the donations can then generate the entire private key sequence from the corresponding xpriv key when they want to spend the coins.  In the worst case a very small number of transactions would get sent to one address before the widget changes the donation address on the next page visit.]

End of PSA/rant, now back to our regularly scheduled thread...

[bg002h]

Only a minor problem -- you must use the address before you can use it.

Exactly. Address reuse = privacy leak!

[CIYAM]

[Edit:  Thinking about this donation address issue some more I think a possible solution would be to generate an xpriv/xpub key pair, create a widget based on the xpub key that displays the first Bitcoin address for the first public key in the sequence until that address receives a donation, then start displaying the Bitcoin address of the next public key in the xpub sequence, etc.  This way a new Bitcoin address is published until it gets used and once it gets used it gets retired.  The entity receiving the donations can then generate the entire private key sequence from the corresponding xpriv key when they want to spend the coins.  In the worst case a very small number of transactions would get sent to one address before the widget changes the donation address on the next page visit.]

End of PSA/rant, now back to our regularly scheduled thread...

Your "edit" idea perhaps makes sense for the "web site widget" but won't work on a "billboard" (unless it is a digital "smart billboard" I guess).

Personally I would create a small wallet for such "tips" or use "coin control" to get rid of some small amount (perhaps another tip I got myself) but of course I get your point that for most people this would be "inconvenient" or "too difficult".

I think that both your and Danny's point with this is really that "publishing an address" is a bad idea full stop (as even if that address "changes with each tip/donation" someone can just monitor the website to keep a track of all such addresses that were given out taking you back to square #1).

In favour of the "short address" idea I have had at least one or two experiences in "buying BTC for cash" when "I did not have my computer handy" - in that case having either a "known public address" (or being able to find one easily with a "short name") was actually "the only way I was going to be able do the deal".

[BurtW]

1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU:2adfd

Vanity address, firstbits address and minaddress all in one.  Very sharp looking!

[CIYAM]

1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU:2adfd

Vanity address, firstbits address and minaddress all in one.  Very sharp looking!

Thanks - note that it is somewhat a "marketing issue" also (so I was trying to make it look nice while still working with good old copy and paste - including touch screens).

[BurtW]

1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU:2adfd

Vanity address, firstbits address and minaddress all in one.  Very sharp looking!

Thanks - note that it is somewhat a "marketing issue" also (so I was trying to make it look nice while still working with good old copy and paste - including touch screens).

BTW:  a simple change in algorithm would make these addresses almost as good as full addresses with respect to typographical error checking.  Just include part of the checksum area of the full address. In other words instead of just looking at the front of the address for the unique string look at both ends when calculating the unique matching pattern to publish.  Because this proposed minaddress now includes part of the checksum area the probability of a typo mapping to a valid address is even less.  So for 1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU we might get something like 2adfd-1c-U as the unique minaddress.

[CIYAM]

BTW:  a simple change in algorithm would make these addresses almost as good as full addresses with respect to typographical error checking.  Just include part of the checksum area of the full address.

Think you must have missed this:

1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU:2adfd

Hmm... you could put part or all of the normal address checksum in the MinAddress like the above.

Already thunk it!

But glad to see you agree with my suggestion.

[Moneyunmaker]

Isnt this the same as vanity addresses or im missing something?

[CIYAM]

Isnt this the same as vanity addresses or im missing something?

It is how "to find" said vanity address that this addresses (not creating it).

[BurtW]

BTW:  a simple change in algorithm would make these addresses almost as good as full addresses with respect to typographical error checking.  Just include part of the checksum area of the full address.

Think you must have missed this:

1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU:2adfd

Hmm... you could put part or all of the normal address checksum in the MinAddress like the above.

Already thunk it!

But glad to see you agree with my suggestion.

I did not miss it, you did not specify a syntax.  The syntax in your reverse order case would need to be something like:

1c:ju:2adfd  (head:tail:block) or in the original syntax 2adfd-1c-ju (block-head-tail)

[CIYAM]

I did not miss it, you did not specify a syntax.  The syntax in your reverse order case would need to be something like:

1c:ju:2adfd  (head:tail:block) or in the original syntax 2adfd-1c-ju (block-head-tail)

I don't think it could work like that (otherwise you'd break copy and paste per my sig example) - I think that the symbol (being a : or something else) itself would imply that the 4 characters *before* the : are the last 4 from the address.

so: 1ciyamTeju:2adfd

(but is now starting to not be so "minimal")

Also I guess you could *repeat* the checksum characters like this:

1ciyam3htJit1feGa26p2wQ4aw6KFTejU:2adfdTejU

[charlieSeen]

Only a minor problem -- you must use the address before you can use it.

Exactly. Address reuse = privacy leak!

This is a major problem. However I would think that this would appeal to people who are not as concerned about privacy (for example a hotdog vendor accepting bitcoin for sales, or a charity).

I don't think this would appeal to the "average" user of bitcoin. 

[awesome31312]

Only a minor problem -- you must use the address before you can use it.

Exactly. Address reuse = privacy leak!

This is a major problem. However I would think that this would appeal to people who are not as concerned about privacy (for example a hotdog vendor accepting bitcoin for sales, or a charity).

I don't think this would appeal to the "average" user of bitcoin. 

If vendors aren't concerned about privacy, they can always use fiat.

[ffe]

Isnt this the same as vanity addresses or im missing something?

MinAddress is condensed form of your address.

Example:
Bitcoin Full Address: 17ykeSBpC8MrJr4GrizNUYz6DEnwQ598fQ
Min-Address: 3fa5b-17yk

So with MinAddress you can easily remember/type your address.

I've always used a URL shortener such as Google's:

The address 17ykeSBpC8MrJr4GrizNUYz6DEnwQ598fQ

is captured by  http://goo.gl/ywROqN  (this looks up that address on Blockchain)

So I need only memorize ywROqN

(Small spelling errors will be caught by Google and it's also very private unless you choose to publish it)

[CIYAM]

I think the issue that was been raised was that of a "typo".

If one types 1ciyam:2adfe rather than 1ciyam:2adfd then presumably you could end up with an incorrect address.

If all or part of the checksum was included then 1ciyam:2adfdeJu would be "invalid" (unless it was actually the same address).