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CH05::HD wallets: add section for public child key derivation

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As we rewrite the opening of the chapter to introduce HD wallets in
stages, this introduces the penultimate part: the ability to create
derived public keys without access to the corresponding private keys.
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David A. Harding 2023-02-13 22:17:09 -10:00
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@ -113,6 +113,63 @@ possible to store private keys more securely than public keys.
.Deterministic key generation: a deterministic sequence of keys derived from a seed for a wallet database .Deterministic key generation: a deterministic sequence of keys derived from a seed for a wallet database
image::images/mbc2_0502.png["Deterministic Wallet"] image::images/mbc2_0502.png["Deterministic Wallet"]
==== Public Child Key Derivation
In <<public_key_derivation>>, we learned how to create a public key from a private key
using Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). Although operations on an
elliptic curve are not intuitive, they are analogous to the addition,
subtraction, and multiplication operations we use in regular
arithmetic. In other words, it's possible to add or subtract from a
public key, or to multiply it. Consider the equation we used for
generating a public key (K) from a private key (k) using the generator
point (G):
----
K == k * G
----
It's possible to create a derived keypair, called a child keypair, by
simply adding the same value to both sides of the equation:
----
K + (123 * G) == (k + 123) * G
----
An interesting consequence of this is that adding `123` to the public
key can be done using entirely public information. For example, Alice
generates public key K and gives it to Bob. Bob doesn't know the
private key, but he does know the global constant G, so he can add any
value to the public key to produce a derived public child key. If he
then tells Alice the value he added to the public key, she can add the
same value to the private key, producing a derived private child key
that corresponds to the public child key Bob created.
In other words, it's possible to create child public keys even if you
don't know anything about the parent private key. The value added to a
public key is known as a _key tweak._ If a deterministic algorithm is
used for generating the key tweaks, then it's possible to for someone
who doesn't know the private key to create an essentially unlimited
sequence of public child keys from a single public parent key. The
person who controls the private parent key can then use the same key
tweaks to create all the corresponding private child keys.
This technique is commonly used is to separate wallet application
frontends (which don't require private keys) from signing operations
(which do require private keys). For example, Alice's frontend
distributes her public keys to people wanting to pay her. Later, when
she wants to spend the received money, she can provide the key tweaks
she used to a _hardware signing device_ (sometimes confusingly called a
_hardware wallet_) which securely stores her original private key. The
hardware signer uses the tweaks to derive the necessary child private
keys and uses them to sign the transactions, returning the signed
transactions to the less-secure frontend for broadcast to the Bitcoin
network.
Public child key derivation can produce a linear sequence of keys
similar to the previously seen <<Type1_wallet>>, but modern wallets
applications use one more trick to provide a tree of keys instead a
single sequence.
[[hd_wallets]] [[hd_wallets]]
==== HD Wallets (BIP32/BIP44) ==== HD Wallets (BIP32/BIP44)