Blockstack ID identity address should not look like a bitcoin address

Blockstack ID owner addresses are bitcoin addresses. These owner addresses secure the user’s ID and own their username when they add one.

These addresses are user-visible in the browser interface.

I’m concerned that users will try to send bitcoin to them inadvertently - they might think that their wallet is the same address as the address on the Blockstack ID.

While we could retrieve the money since the private key of that address is derived from their secret recovery key, we don’t have that functionality at the moment and probably want to avoid this type of confusion.

@yknl @guylepage3 @shea256 and I discussed a couple ways of doing this.

1. Appending the letter b to the address - we would then remove the b when using the address in the system
2. Using a different network version for the address (so that the address wouldn’t start with the same character as a mainnet bitcoin address)
3. Displaying the public key hash

Since this touches the entire system, it would be great have input from the whole community before making such a change. I would love to hear your thoughts!

[markmhx]

I’m reopening this issue since although we did start prepending ID- to identity addresses, there appears to be lingering concern in this comment thread that it wasn’t a satisfactory solution.

I also have two particular concerns about how we’re currently showing the address in the browser:

1. As a developer, using that prefix causes confusion as to the actual value of the identity address. In the browser, I see ID-1789gBX7w1XFPeG5SFKkbfsUbrHvnTvYRC but blockstack.js returns 1789gBX7w1XFPeG5SFKkbfsUbrHvnTvYRC as part of the user data object. Had I not coincidentally found this issue or otherwise noticed the discrepancy, I could easily have assumed that the ID- prefix either was or wasn’t part of the value.
2. It’s not clear to me why we even show the identity address at all in the browser UI (or anywhere else user-facing). Per @dantrevino’s suggestion, wouldn’t it be best to just remove it from display? We’re encouraging users to register names, which are much more usable in general. I’m not even aware of what a user would do with their identity address alone. And showing anything code-like is bound to scare non-technical users.

[yknl]

What if we gave everyone a free subdomain on blockstack.id like:

1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH.blockstack.id

And just display that in the profile?