BIP 46 guide to Draft fidelity-bond derivation, 960 monthly locks, P2WSH CLTV scripts, cold certificates, recovery and time risks.
This guide explains BIP 46 fidelity bond addresses in plain English. It covers the problem behind the BIP, why it matters and whether the proposal is part of Bitcoin today.
BIP 46 fidelity bond addresses: Fidelity bonds make identities costly by locking capital for time and enable third parties to verify the sacrifice.
A node operator is checking BIP 46 fidelity bond addresses. BIP 46 is Draft even though JoinMarket uses the scheme. Implement month calculation in UTC and test leap years, first-second boundaries and the year-2038 limit on 32-bit time representations.
Fidelity bonds make identities costly by locking capital for time and enable third parties to verify the sacrifice. BIP 46 is Draft even though JoinMarket uses the scheme.
Derived keys use m/84 hardened/0 hardened/0 hardened/2/index. The change value two separates bonds from ordinary receive and change paths; network coin type must still be handled correctly.
Indexes 0 through 959 map to monthly locks from January 2020 to December 2099. There is no gap limit: recovery scans all 960 candidates.
The witness script pushes the Unix lock time, runs CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY and DROP, then checks the derived public-key signature. The P2WSH output is witness version zero plus its SHA256 hash.
The bond key can sign a certificate key, which then signs a service endpoint. Compromise of the online certificate permits temporary impersonation but should not unlock the bond funds.
Implement month calculation in UTC and test leap years, first-second boundaries and the year-2038 limit on 32-bit time representations. Funds cannot be spent before consensus lock conditions are met.
Back up seed and scheme identity, derive every index, scan history and UTXOs, reconstruct witness scripts and verify certificate messages, outpoints, values, expiry periods and signatures independently. Build a revision-pinned evidence pack on an isolated node, wallet or protocol harness. Record source commit, binary hash, network, chain identity, configuration and dependencies.
BIP 46 fidelity bond addresses: Fidelity bonds make identities costly by locking capital for time and enable third parties to verify the sacrifice.
Fidelity bonds make identities costly by locking capital for time and enable third parties to verify the sacrifice.
Derived keys use m/84 hardened/0 hardened/0 hardened/2/index.
Indexes 0 through 959 map to monthly locks from January 2020 to December 2099.
BIP 46 makes fidelity-bond recovery deterministic, but the long-lived timelocks demand exact derivation, time handling and script reconstruction. Operators must distinguish proof of locked value from control of a hot certificate identity.
Check the current specification status and the documentation for the exact implementation you operate before moving production funds or changing a mining node.
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