BIP-85: Nostr application should error for reserved index #2287

pull akarve wants to merge 1 commits into bitcoin:master from akarve:bip85-nostr-reserved-index-error changing 1 files +8 −1

akarve commented at 1:12 AM on September 13, 2026: contributor

@ethicnology Please take a look. I noticed this when testing your reference implementation. There's no good reason to silently accept an index of 0.
BIP-85: Nostr application should error for reserved index
Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
40a45c74da
jonatack added the label BIP Update by Owner on Oct 18, 2026

in bip-0085.mediawiki:439 in 40a45c74da

 434 | @@ -435,7 +435,8 @@ Each <code>identity</code> is an independent, unlinkable Nostr key namespace, an
 435 |  Identity index <code>0'</code> and account index <code>0'</code> are reserved for future
 436 |  key-management use, such as proof-of-linkage between an identity's keys, key rotation, and
 437 |  revocation. Their semantics are out of scope for this BIP and may be specified by a future
 438 | -NIP. Usable signing keys therefore start at <code>identity >= 1'</code> and
 439 | +NIP. Implementations should throw an error if a reserved index is provided as input.
 440 | +Usable signing keys therefore start at <code>identity >= 1'</code> and

jonatack commented at 9:38 PM on October 18, 2026:

Does https://github.com/akarve/bipsea do this?

(will review soon, sorry for the delay)

akarve commented at 12:41 AM on October 19, 2026:

Yessir, as of https://github.com/akarve/bipsea/pull/76.

bipsea mnemonic | bipsea xprv | bipsea derive --application nostr --identity 0 --index 1
Usage: bipsea derive [OPTIONS]
Try 'bipsea derive --help' for help.

Error: Invalid value for '--identity': 0 is not in the range 1<=x<=2147483647.

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