PIP-5: address prefix

[Ja7ad]

PIP-5: address prefix

[b00f]

The Pactus address is made of 21 bytes. It includes the type of encryption used and the public key hash. You can learn more about it here.

Right now, the address doesn't show what it's used for.
Because it doesn't show its use, people can make mistakes. For instance, during our Testnet-1, some users sent money to the wrong address. You can see an example here. Also, in our block explorer, users struggled to find validators because it always searched for accounts (bug in explorer).

I find this PIP (Proposal) an interesting idea. If we use it, the address can show its correct use. Like, we can stop a payment if it's going to the wrong type of address. Remember, the basic address stays the same (21 bytes), but how it looks can change based on its use.

Wallet

Our wallet will also need an update. Currently, we set up addresses similar to this method EIP-2334.

Our current structure for creating addresses is:

m / purpose' / coin_type' / account / use

For now, the "use" section is always zero. We can change it to:

0: Account
1: Validator

So, when someone makes a new address, they need to pick its use.

[b00f]

The issue with this PIP is that the address doesn't communicate its type. Consequently, any given 21-byte sequence could represent both a validator and an account.