Did you know BIP39 had a 5th author who removed himself? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Did you know BIP39 had a 5th author who removed himself?

2841 sats \ 13 comments \ @raw_avocado 29 Mar bitcoin

Thomas Voegtlin(creator of Electrum) removed himself from the authors after multiple disagreements with the BIP39 design.

If you are not aware there was quite a bit of drama on the Bitcoin mailing list around '13 when the standard was being proposed.

For context, Electrum was the 1st deterministic Bitcoin wallet that allowed for a BIP32 seed to be backed up into 12 words, and then came BIP39.

In all fairness BIP39 was kinda rushed, and even though valid criticism was provided regarding it's shortcomings, they were ignored.

Electrum has its own backup scheme that supports versioning & is not dependent on a dictionary, vastly superior IMO.

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280 sats \ 4 replies \ @freetx 29 Mar

Yes, and personally I think ThomasV was right. I think BIP39 should've just based itself on the Electrum solution.

The 24 words have cost lots of people lots of money without really enhancing security at all.

9 sats \ 0 replies \ @sime 30 Mar

BIP-39 versioning was proposed again this year. One of the original BIP-39 authors responded:

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2024-January/022276.html

9 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bell_curve 29 Mar

I have not lost money from 24 words but quickly realized my mistake

Emptied 24 wallet and moved to 12 wallet

15 sats \ 0 replies \ @raw_avocado OP 29 Mar

I 100% agree.

Btw I suspect this was where everything went down hill :p

"Two years ago I proposed exactly this and you refused to add extra information to mnemonic, because "it isn't necessary" and "it makes it longer to mnemonization". What changed since then?"

source: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2013-October/003428.html

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @petertodd 29 Mar

Agreed.

53 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 29 Mar

You should post this fact in the weekly SN Fun Fact: #485342 Is a good one!

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @raw_avocado OP 29 Mar

Done, and 10x.

20 sats \ 0 replies \ @oliverweiss 29 Mar

I didn’t know that the guys behind Trezor hardware wallet contributed to BIP39.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 30 Mar

Quite an interesting detail. The history of Bitcoin has a lot of twists and turns. I was previously blissfully unaware of the contentious development of BIP39. Mapping 2048 words to every 11-bit combination is a stroke of genius and has likely made storing Bitcoin easier and safer for millions. Thanks for sharing.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @OT 29 Mar

So the main difference between bip32 & bip39 is the amount of words?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jakoyoh629 29 Mar

Anyone know why he pulled out?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @pajdo 29 Mar

deleted by author

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 29 Mar

For me, he has every right to disagree and if someone is so firm and true, nobody likes him. The other authors didn't like Voegtlin for his firm attitude.