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From: Chris D'Costa <chris.dcosta@meek.io>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 13:14:49 +0200
To: vv01f <vv01f@riseup.net>
Cc: "bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net"
	<bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] secure assigned bitcoin address directory
Precedence: list

Security of transmission of person-to-person pay-to addresses is one of the u=
se cases that we are addressing on our hardware wallet.=20

I have yet to finish the paper but in a nutshell it uses a decentralised led=
ger of, what we refer to as, "device keys".=20

These keys are not related in any way to the Bitcoin keys, (which is why I'm=
 hesitating about discussing it here) neither do they even attempt to identi=
fy the human owner if the device. But they do have a specific use case and t=
hat is to provide "advanced knowledge" of a publickey that can be used for e=
ncrypting a message to an intended recipient, without the requirement for a t=
hird-party CA, and more importantly without prior dialogue. We think it is t=
his that would allow you to communicate a pay-to address to someone without s=
eeing them in a secure way.

As I understand it the BlockChain uses "time" bought through proof of work t=
o establish a version of the truth, we are using time in the reverse sense :=
 advanced knowledge of all pubkeys. Indeed all devices could easily check th=
eir own record to identify problems on the ledger.

There is of course more to this, but I like to refer to the "distributed led=
ger of device keys" as the "Web-of-trust re-imagined" although that isn't st=
rictly true.

Ok there you have it. The cat is out of the bag, feel free to give feedback,=
 I have to finish the paper, apologies if it is not a topic for this list.

Regards

Chris D'Costa


> On 31 Mar 2014, at 12:21, vv01f <vv01f@riseup.net> wrote:
>=20
> Some users on bitcointalk[0] would like to have their vanity addresses
> available for others easily to find and verify the ownership over a kind
> of WoT. Right now they sign their own addresses and quote them in the
> forums.
> As I pointed out there already the centralized storage in the forums is
> not secury anyhow and signed messages could be swapped easily with the
> next hack of the forums.
>=20
> Is that use case taken care of in any plans already?
>=20
> I thought about abusing pgp keyservers but that would suit for single
> vanity addresses only.
> It seems webfinger could be part of a solution where servers of a
> business can tell and proof you if a specific address is owned by them.
>=20
> [0] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3D502538
> [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3D505095
>=20
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------=
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