[bitcoin-dev] Bravo Charlie One: Branding Bech32

I here record for the devs a thought I had a few days ago on the Bitcoin Forum about BIP 173 Bech32 addresses. I’ve heard Greg Maxwell say that “Bech32 is designed for human use and basically nothing else”; so I hope I be not untoward in considering the following human-friendliness enhancement to entwine with the technical ambit of this list. This MAY be suitable for mention in an informative specification, or informative section thereof. To help gain user familiarity with and acceptance of the error-correcting, case-insensitive Bitcoin addresses of the future, I propose a need for what I think marketers call “branding”. The best branding is that which derives naturally from some intrinsic quality of a thing; wherefore I look to what may perhaps be a bit of serendipity in the specification. I expect that in practical use, one of the great advantages of Bech32 addresses will be the relative ease of communicating them aloud—especially over the phone. In similar circumstances, when trying to convey unusual names or pseudorandom strings, I’ve found radio alphabets to work well at their intended purpose. And when reading Bech32 Bitcoin addresses in the most popular radio alphabet, they will always start with a catchy phrase: “Bravo Charlie One”. That’s memorable, $SEARCH-able, and yet also one of those unique, otherwise meaningless phrases which gets marketers excited. Keeping to a word triplet, I hereby submit for consideration as the official nickname for Bech32 Bitcoin use: “Bravo Charlie Addresses”. These are the Bitcoin addresses with the magic words, suitable for a motto: “Bravo Charlie One means money.” Add a logo à la Segwit’s, and raise user awareness of this exciting new technology! Beyond the branding issue, recommendations for Bitcoin spelling-alphabet use in English and other languages may perhaps be a suitable matter for such standardization as would facilitate coherent user documentation. I invite discussion. Of course, this branding only applies directly to Bitcoin Bech32 addresses. The BIP 173 authors were gracious to make the standard generally adaptable; and it has already seen some uptake amongst altcoins. I myself am now contemplating how Bech32 would be a superior human-facing format for key fingerprints for PGP, SSH, and even TLS, with HRPs of “pgp”, “ssh”, “tls”, etc. and some appropriate means of embedding the key type just as “bc” embeds the witness version. There is an urgent general need for a specification which reduces the inherent pain of wetware in handling pseudorandom strings; and I do think that anything which familiarizes users with Bech32 in a specific use will be beneficial to Bech32 adoption generally. To celebrate, as seen in my sig, I created for myself a new Bravo Charlie Address which expresses that I am pleased: Now, I have an error-correcting, case-insensitive address which can receive only genuine Bitcoin cash money. Because “Bravo Charlie One means money.” Here’s to the Bitcoin address format of the future! -- nullius at nym.zone | PGP ECC: 0xC2E91CD74A4C57A105F6C21B5A00591B2F307E0C Bitcoin: bc1qcash96s5jqppzsp8hy8swkggf7f6agex98an7h | (Segwit nested: 3NULL3ZCUXr7RDLxXeLPDMZDZYxuaYkCnG) (PGP RSA: 0x36EBB4AB699A10EE) “‘If you’re not doing anything wrong, you have nothing to hide.’ No! Because I do nothing wrong, I have nothing to show.” — nullius -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 228 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20171225/b743b321/attachment.sig>