bitcoin-dev
BIP Proposal - Address Paste Improvement
Posted on: December 1, 2018 12:07 UTC
The discussion thread revolves around the need to document a standard for transferring Bitcoin addresses from web pages or messages to wallet address input fields.
While there were no comments related to implementation details, concerns were raised about incentivizing users to use the copypaste functionality extensively. The counterargument was made that crypto hijackers use the clipboard because it's the most convenient thing to hijack, and if users moved to other ways of specifying destinations, that could end up being an issue too. Meanwhile, the conversation also touched on BIP70 payment protocol, which has authentication via certificates but doesn't work for the "the person in front of you is the only trust anchor you have" use case. Other protocols like BIP75 and BIP47 may help, but the number of wallets that support these protocols is small due to their relative complexity. A work-in-progress implementation already exists in Wasabi. Ultimately, whether this needs to be a BIP or not is up to the community to decide based on how much they value UX.