delvingbitcoin

Unspendable keys in descriptors

Unspendable keys in descriptors

Original Postby andrewtoth

Posted on: December 3, 2024 03:33 UTC

The discussion revolves around the standardization requirements for wallet policies, particularly in handling taproot addresses and the associated public keys (pubkeys).

The challenge mentioned involves wallet policies that may list the same @i multiple times. To address this issue, a method of sorting and removing duplicate extended public keys (xpubs) before concatenating them and applying a SHA256 hash is suggested as the simplest implementation strategy. This approach necessitates a restriction where all xpubs adhere to the specific format xpub/<0;1>/*, explicitly excluding the use of optional derivation paths. The rationale behind this limitation is to streamline the process, considering that legacy wallets, which might require such optional paths, would unlikely support taproot features. This proposal aims at creating a uniform standard for internal xpubs across descriptors and wallet policies by eliminating redundancies, thereby facilitating a more efficient and simplified system for managing public keys within wallet software.