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A seed consists of 81 trytes. A standard address also consists of 81 trytes (I have read that it is also possible to generate longer addresses but not sure about that). Every seed can generate multiple addresses, based on the combination of seed + index as I have learnt from here: How are addresses calculated from the seed? Does this mean that, assuming any positive natural number is allowed as index, any seed could sign for any address?

Michael Paul
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  • Your assumption is wrong, as in practice the index is limited to 32 bits. But if the assumption was right, every valid address could be signed by any seed, but cracking the index is equally complex to cracking the seed :) – mihi Aug 18 '19 at 15:07
  • Is the valid range of the index limited in practice by code that may be changed by anyone or imposed by the network? I mean some programming languages allow for integer types of infinite length... And why 32 bits and not 27 trits? – Michael Paul Aug 18 '19 at 15:38
  • The limit is in practice and if you implement another client you can implement it using other ways too. To be clear, the way of computing private keys from seeds is not at all imposed by the network, so your client can do any other way as long as the computation of the address from the private key is not changed. – mihi Aug 18 '19 at 21:59
  • However, in pracice you won't do that since people expect to be able to use the same seeds with all clients and access the same funds. – mihi Aug 18 '19 at 22:00
  • (A possible use case would be to implement a protocol that is easier to brute force but makes it easier to find vanity addresses used for donations. On the other hand, as addresses are single use, probably nobody cares enough to spend much time for nice vanity addresses anyway) – mihi Aug 18 '19 at 22:02
  • I'm just wondering now, if there is a way to find vanity addresses more easily, wouldn't the same method allow scanning for any address of interest? For example those with large balances? – Michael Paul Aug 19 '19 at 00:00
  • And another thing makes of wonder, if someone else has already double or triple spent on an address and I happen to generate the same address, is my private key partially exposed even before I have used my address for any transaction at all? Do I need to keep track of all addresses ever spent on the network to keep my funds completely secure? – Michael Paul Aug 19 '19 at 00:05
  • The idea of vanity addresses is that they start with certain letters, and there are ways compute the start more likely. However, computing the end of them will need more time, so you won't have any chance of targeting an existing address. And while it is certainly possible that anyone might ever calculate an address that somebody else calculated previously, the odds for it are so small that it is (a lot) more likely that everybody on earth got struck by lightning on the same day. So I would not be afraid of it. – mihi Aug 19 '19 at 20:00

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