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I'm trying to convert a compressed WIF generated by bitcoinaddress python Library but I couldn't find a function to do the task so I collected one. I would like someone to review my code and maybe remove unnecessary steps and enhance it.

# Script to convert compressed WIF to private key then to uncompressed WIF.

import hashlib
import base58
import binascii
from binascii import hexlify, unhexlify


def doubleSha256(hex):
    """Double sha256 function"""
    bin = binascii.unhexlify(hex)
    # perform SHA-256 hash on the private_key
    hash_1st = hashlib.sha256(bin).digest()
    # perform SHA-256 on the previous SHA-256 hash
    hash_2nd = hashlib.sha256(hash_1st).digest()
    return binascii.hexlify(hash_2nd)


Testnet WIF


private_key_WIF = "cVbZ8ovhye9AoAHFsqobCf7LxbXDAECy9Kb8TZdfsDYMZGBUyCnm"  # compressed


~ private_key_WIF_uncompressed = "93QEdCzUrzMRsnbx2YuF6MsNjxQA6iWSrv9e2wX4NM4UmYzUsLn"


first_decode = base58.b58decode(private_key_WIF)
private_key_full = binascii.hexlify(first_decode)


Check if the key is mainnet or testnet


if private_key_full.startswith(b"80"):
    testnet = False
elif private_key_full.startswith(b"ef"):
    testnet = True


private_key_full = private_key_full[2:-8]


if private_key_full.endswith(b"01"):
    private_key_full = private_key_full[:-2]


if not testnet:
    # prepended mainnet version byte to private key
    text = b"80" + private_key_full
elif testnet:
    # prepended testnet version byte to private key
    text = b"ef" + private_key_full


Perfrom double sha256 on string


double_sha256 = doubleSha256(text)


create a checksum using the first 4 bytes of the previous SHA-256 hash


checksum = double_sha256[0:8]


append the 4 checksum bytes to the private_key


private_key_with_checksum = text+checksum


convert mainnet_private_key + checksum into base58 encoded string


uncompressed_wif = base58.b58encode(binascii.unhexlify(private_key_with_checksum))
print(f"{uncompressed_wif=}")

Resources:

Murch
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uak
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1 Answers1

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if you want to convert a compressed WIF to an uncompressed WIF, you would need to:

  1. decode the compressed WIF
  2. extract the private key
  3. remove the suffix
  4. recompute the checksum
  5. encode it back in base58

Here's one way you can implement it:

def decompress_WIF(compressed_wif):
    hex_data = binascii.b2a_hex(base58.b58decode(compressed_wif)).decode()
    if len(hex_data) != 76:
        raise ValueError("Invalid length for a compressed WIF")
    prefix = hex_data[:2]
    suffix = hex_data[-10:-8]
    original_checksum = hex_data[-8:]
    xpriv = hex_data[2:-10]
    if suffix != "01":
        raise ValueError("The provided WIF is not a compressed key")
    if checksum(prefix + xpriv + suffix) != original_checksum:
        raise ValueError("Invalid checksum in the provided WIF")
    new_checksum = checksum(prefix + xpriv)
    uncompressed_wif = base58.b58encode(binascii.a2b_hex(prefix + xpriv + new_checksum)).decode()
    return uncompressed_wif

Note that this code does not check the version byte at all

leslie
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  • It complains about NameError: name 'checksum' is not defined – uak Sep 17 '23 at 16:18
  • @uak Of course, you need to define it! You can recode the checksum function, here's one example: def checksum(data): return sha256(sha256(binascii.a2b_hex(data)).digest()).hexdigest()[:8] – leslie Sep 17 '23 at 16:56