📅 Original date posted:2013-02-22 📝 Original message:Has anyone been thinking about providing tools to allow users to cope with key compromise - or more generally, to manage key retirement etc? atm, if you suspect that your keys may be liable to compromise then what would you have to do? You'd have to create a new wallet (on a new computer? or is it easy to have two coexisting installs on one computer?) And then you'd have to make one or more payments from the old wallet to the new wallet, to transfer the coins. It's a pain, and you've lost your address book, your transaction history, etc. And unless you keep the old wallet about, too, you're a bit stuck if someone makes a payment to one of the old addresses. It's something that most users would baulk at unless they're really sure they're at significant risk. Of course, there are a spectrum of scenarios, ranging from having an unencrypted wallet stolen by someone who knows what it is, through to deciding that the passphrase you used to use when you only had a few dollars worth of BTC maybe isn't good enough now you've got tens of thousands of dollars worth of coins. Or maybe you have no reason to suspect there is a risk of compromise, but just have a corporate key management policy that recommends retiring keys after a period of time. What would be really nice is for bitcoin to have a big key compromise button, which would automatically transfer all coins to newly generated addresses (optionally with a pause between generation and transaction - to allow for a new wallet backup). Optionally, too, the compromised/retired addresses could be marked with a flag such that if someone sends coins to that address bitcoind immediately generates a transaction to transfer the coins to address(es) which are good. I know deterministic wallets have many proponents - but personally I like having a bag of keys - with the idea that over a period of time, old keys will routinely be retired and their balances automatically transfered to newly generated keys. If someone really manages to crack the passphrase on that 10-year-old wallet backup they got hold of, then if would be nice to minimise the damage they could do... And, of course, I want a big panic button that allows me to automatically transfer all my coins to new addresses ASAP if I suddenly do something stupid, like accidentally type my passphrase into my IRC window :-) Thoughts? Is this functionality that there is any interest in developing within the official client? If there is any interest in this then obviously the first step would be to specify exactly what functionality is wanted... roy