How do Paper Wallets work? I'm completely mystified - page 2.

etotheipi

legendary

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Core Armory Developer

Quote from: WilderedB on April 23, 2013, 03:05:12 PM

Well tried it for awhile. Seemed to be stuck at 95%, so closed it.

I wasn't sure where the icon would be to restart it, found it, clicked it, like you do... "0% 8 hours"

Why start again from the beginning? How does that make sense?

But yeah, I suspect you're right. This whole bitcoin thing seems to be becoming more hassle than its worth.

I don't mean to go troubleshooting in this unrelated thread, but perhaps this topic is essentially closed anyway (question answered). So I won't feel guilty about it.

There seems to be a problem with some existing Bitcoin installations, where the block data gets corrupt and Armory can't read it. That's why it gets stuck. And also why I'm changing the stuff under the hood to avoid this in the future. It has led to me recommending that users redownload the blockchain until I have a more-robust solution in place.

It's not ideal, by any means. As I said, the price of security and features (in this case) is usability. Luckily, once you get over the usability curve, Armory is actually qiute pleasant, but the setup can be a pain for some configurations. I'm working on making this easier. Until then, I don't blame people for glossing over it when it doesn't work out-of-the-box. I hope I can make it work out-of-the-box, better.

WilderedB

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Activity: 93

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Well tried it for awhile. Seemed to be stuck at 95%, so closed it.

I wasn't sure where the icon would be to restart it, found it, clicked it, like you do... "0% 8 hours"

Why start again from the beginning? How does that make sense?

But yeah, I suspect you're right. This whole bitcoin thing seems to be becoming more hassle than its worth.

etotheipi

legendary

Activity: 1428

Merit: 1093

Core Armory Developer

Quote from: WilderedB on April 23, 2013, 01:58:09 PM

I was hoping it was a replacement for that bloatware, rather than an extra layer on top of it. ;

Unfortunately, building on top of that "bloatware" is the best way to maximize your security and avoid hard forks. Which is fairly important for a piece of software that advertises maximum security.

It won't be, in the future, but it's the best solution available right now. All apps trade off various dimensions of security for convenience/usability. You clearly don't prefer this tradeoff. Oh well.

WilderedB

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I was hoping it was a replacement for that bloatware, rather than an extra layer on top of it. Grin

etotheipi

legendary

Activity: 1428

Merit: 1093

Core Armory Developer

Quote from: WilderedB on April 23, 2013, 01:35:23 PM

OK... thanks for that...

Just downloaded Armory.. It says I don't have the software? Oh, you mean the main client thing?

The thing that takes forever to try to catch up with the entire history of bitcoin, and then says there was an error and starts all over again? THAT software?

Oh boy..

Yeah, it's got some usability issues to get over. But it is a widely used app for people that are serious about Bitcoin security. Like many advanced tools, it may take some patience to get setup. You'll notice that the website doesn't say anything about being for new users.

WilderedB

member

Activity: 93

Merit: 10

OK... thanks for that...

Just downloaded Armory.. It says I don't have the software? Oh, you mean the main client thing?

The thing that takes forever to try to catch up with the entire history of bitcoin, and then says there was an error and starts all over again? THAT software?

Oh boy..

etotheipi

legendary

Activity: 1428

Merit: 1093

Core Armory Developer

Quote from: WilderedB on April 23, 2013, 12:36:47 PM

But I just read elsewhere that if you spend less than the amount of an incoming transaction that the remaining 'change' is sent out and then sent back, where your wallet then creates new addresses and new keys for the change.

As such surely a paper record would immediately become out of date, as it doesn't have the newest keys?

This is why you use a solution like Armory (which is what the original OP is talking about). The paper backup holds every address ever generated by the wallet. Including change addresses. You don't have to worry about it, it's completely transparent to you.

(1) Restore your wallet
(2) Send coins
(3) Destroy your computer.

Armory will send change to the next address that is already backed up by the paper backup.

WilderedB

member

Activity: 93

Merit: 10

But I just read elsewhere that if you spend less than the amount of an incoming transaction that the remaining 'change' is sent out and then sent back, where your wallet then creates new addresses and new keys for the change.

As such surely a paper record would immediately become out of date, as it doesn't have the newest keys?

Stampbit

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Quote from: TierNolan on April 21, 2013, 04:10:32 PM

Quote from: LurbQBurdock on April 21, 2013, 03:50:53 PM

What's really going on here?

The number is the root of your wallet. From that number, you can calculate a sequence of private keys.

Also, from the root, you can generate a public root and from the public root a matching sequence of public keys.

This means that if someone has your public root, they can generate your public key sequence. However, they can't generate your private keys.

The public monitoring software computes the first say 1000 public keys and watches the network for those. This is safe since it is impossible to generate matching private keys.

To spend a coin, you need the private key. This requires the private root key. This should be stored offline.

Once you have that root (written on paper), all public and private keys can be generated. So if you lose your wallet, all the keys can be regenerated from the paper backup (which never changes).

So easy even a caveman could do it.

kjj

legendary

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I get nervous with deterministic wallets. I very much prefer to generate really random keys for each transaction so that they are totally unrelated.

But, that is silly. Done right, like the way Armory does it, the wallet sequence is at least as secure as everything else in bitcoin.

LurbQBurdock

newbie

Activity: 24

Merit: 0

Ah OK

But does this mean that anyone can see that all of the addresses in my wallet belong to one person? If you know one of my wallet's addresses, can you find the rest of my wallet's addresses?

Edit: Nevermind, I found a description of how it works here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Deterministic_Wallet I see that depending on the algorithm used to generate key-pairs, it can be difficult to find the root key & chain code from a given public key.

Actually, I'm very impressed by this. I was under the impression that I needed to print a new paper wallet each and every time I created a new key-pair, but now I see that my root key and chain code never change, so I only ever need 1 paper wallet.

TierNolan

legendary

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Merit: 1094

Quote from: LurbQBurdock on April 21, 2013, 03:50:53 PM

What's really going on here?

The number is the root of your wallet. From that number, you can calculate a sequence of private keys.

Also, from the root, you can generate a public root and from the public root a matching sequence of public keys.

This means that if someone has your public root, they can generate your public key sequence. However, they can't generate your private keys.

The public monitoring software computes the first say 1000 public keys and watches the network for those. This is safe since it is impossible to generate matching private keys.

To spend a coin, you need the private key. This requires the private root key. This should be stored offline.

Once you have that root (written on paper), all public and private keys can be generated. So if you lose your wallet, all the keys can be regenerated from the paper backup (which never changes).

notbrain

newbie

Activity: 41

Merit: 0

https://blockchain.info/wallet/paper-tutorial

All you need to access a certain wallet address is the private key. Create address/key pair offline, then print out the address and private key on paper, which gives you all the info you need to spend the BTC. Send BTC to this address and the only way to spend it is to know the printed details.

Your wallet can contain many different addresses and keys (behind the scenes) as you send/receive coins, and that's how they grow in size. This is why it's wise to make continual backups (or more often than every 100 transactions your wallet was a part of) in order to make sure you back up all the new addresses your wallet creates in the course of spending/receiving.

LurbQBurdock

newbie

Activity: 24

Merit: 0

I was told that a paper wallet contains unencrypted copies of your public and private keys.

However, I don't understand how this is possible since the Armory paper wallets contain less than 100B of data, while my wallet can be arbitrarily large.

What's really going on here?

Topic: How do Paper Wallets work? I'm completely mystified - page 2. (Read 5198 times)