Standardize a BIP85 Derivation Path for Nostr Keys

[ethicnology]

The title is explicit, bip85 is great, let's standardize a derivation path for Nostr Keys.

This would be very helpful to manage multiple identities over Nostr secured by the same mnemonic.

Derivation path should start after initial bip85 index (83696968') so m/83696968'/1984'/{index}' where index represent the identity of your key

first identity/keys would be 1984'/0', the second 1984'/1' and so on

What do you think?

[vitorpamplona]

Isn't that already on NIP-06? https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/06.md

[ethicnology]

It seems to derive directly from BIP32 without BIP85 but I may be wrong

[vitorpamplona]

Frankly, I failed to understand the differences between all these BIPs.

[fiatjaf]

I don't get the use case for having multiple keys and a standard derivation method for them. NIP-06 was a mistake.

[ethicnology]

Creating multiple identities (depending on the context) secured and derivated from the same mnemonic

[matejcik]

It seems to derive directly from BIP32 without BIP85 but I may be wrong

You can use BIP-85 to generate a BIP-39 seed, then derive the Nostr keys on the NIP-06 path.
I don't see a good reason to abuse BIP-85 specifically to derive Nostr keys. But see also #1774

[ethicnology]

With BIP85 you can derive various format hex, base64…

The good reason for nostr keys using BIP85 is to standardize the derivation path across applications.

Let's say you use app A from which you derived X nostr accounts, now you are switching to app B with the same mnemonic. The app B should recover your nostr accounts using the standardize path.

[matejcik]

Let's say you use app A from which you derived X nostr accounts, now you are switching to app B with the same mnemonic. The app B should recover your nostr accounts using the standardize path.

That's what NIP-06 is literally for.

BIP-85 allows you to export entropy; i.e., it could be useful if you wanted to generate private keys from a seed and then export those keys to some other app that doesn't understand the seed.
This is possibly valuable, see #1774 (comment), but "standardize the derivation path" is a very small piece of that functionality.