Blockstream Developer Rusty Russell Proposes New Bitcoin Address System

Blockstream Bitcoin developer Rusty Russell recently released a proposal for a Bitcoin address that is compatible with the isolated verification and lightning network systems. He detailed the proposal in his personal blog, planning to add a prefix to the beginning of each address and eliminate the capital letters of the address to improve convenience.

New Bitcoin Address

Russell pointed out that the existing options use the p2sh address format, and he said that the only way to get a "half-baked segwit" address is to use BIP142, but this improvement proposal has been delayed.

The "half-finished" isolated verification does not have an address format, and it seems that Core developers are still sticking to the current base58 format. Russell hopes to see Bitcoin change this address format and lists several areas where base58 can be improved:

1. Parsing base58 is not trivial. I use the bignum library to do this. Although you can parse its code the same way you parse bitcoin core.

2. Base58 addresses are variable length. This makes it slightly harder for software to understand, but it also eliminates a simple sanity check.

3. Reading base58 addresses over the phone is difficult. Maxwell (Blockstream CTO) once pointed out that the mixed case of the addresses is particularly annoying.

4. The four-byte SHA check is not guaranteed to catch the most common forms of errors, transpositions or single incorrect letters, although it is pretty good (the chance of a random error getting through is one in four billion)

So Russell proposed his own idea of ​​a Bitcoin address format that is compatible with isolated verification, which may also make Bitcoin addresses easier to use.

The type of prefix, after the colon. Currently "btc:" or "testnet:".

The last letter is the Damm algorithm check digit for the entire previous string, using this 32-bit quasigroup. This protects against single letter errors, as well as single transpositions.

The Bitcoin address proposed by Russell is as follows:

 “btc:ybndrfg8ejkmcpqxot1uwisza345h769ybndrrfg (41 digits for a P2WPKH)”

 “btc:yybndrfg8ejkmcpqxot1uwisza345h769ybndrfg8ejkmcpqxot1uwisza34 (60 digits for a P2WSH)”

While Russell admitted that the proposal was still a work in progress, he had discussed it with Core developer Luke Dashjr , who provided some brief criticism. Dashjr's criticism led Russell to change the prefix of the Bitcoin address he proposed. Instead of using "BTC:" or "testnet:", Dashjr said that "it is incorrect to mix BTC and Bitcoin together", and Russell agreed with Dashjr that using "bc" or "bctest" would be a better choice.

As of press time, this proposal only exists in Russell's personal blog, and he has not provided a specific plan for formal implementation.

Original article: https://news.bitcoin.com/blockstream-russell-bitcoin-addresses/
By Evan Faggart
Translation: Overnight porridge
Source (translation): Babbitt Information ( http://www.8btc.com/bitcoin-addresses ‎)