[Bitcoin-development] Pubkey addresses

[Jordan Mack]

While I think firstbits is an interesting idea, I agree with Matt on 
this one. Firstbits, while being a clever idea, produces a less 
desirable solution in comparison to the current alias proposals.

In addition to Matt's reasons, I would like to add that it is still a 
block of random characters, just shorter. It creates the undesirable 
effect of having addresses short enough that people may try to type it 
in rather than pasting or scanning, which is more error prone.

One obvious scenario for potential exploitation would be if a large 
organization adopted a firstbits address for donations. Others could 
immediately try to collect similar addresses in hopes of a typo. A 
second would be if the organization published the firstbits address on a 
poster in a public location. Someone could easily secure a firstbits 
address which was one character longer, then stencil that extra 
character on to the poster.



On 12/17/2011 8:15 AM, Matt Corallo wrote:
> On Sat, 2011-12-17 at 12:14 +0100, Jorge Timón wrote:
>> Don't know much about QR codes, but I thought they have a length limitation.
>> Why jav wants to use not just addresses but firstbits then?
> Under no circumstances should the use of firstbits ever be supported.
> It doesn't scale, not even close, especially as we (hopefully) move
> towards SPV clients.  Also, it provides incentives for people to spam
> the chain to get a firstbits address.  Never should that be supported.
>
> Matt
>
>
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