Post
Topic
Board Mycelium
Re: MyCelium -Keys issue with regards to BIP39/44 and differences of iOS and Android
by
cetus
on 26/02/2015, 00:28:23 UTC
I think Android version's xpub is better.

For a BIP-44 wallet, the xpub at m/44'/0'/0' makes a lot more sense than at m/44'/0'/0'/0.  The former can be used to find out the total amount of funds in Account 0, and therefore is usable as a “watch-only” key to monitor an HD account without risking the private keys.  And it can still generate “incoming” addresses in the external chain at 0/1, 0/2, 0/3 etc. relative to the xpub.

m/44'/0'/0'/0 does technically offer a bit more privacy by hiding the internal (change) chain.  Still, whoever has it can see all external incoming transactions into the account and track them on the blockchain.  That's really not that much more private than m/44'/0'/0'.  I suppose xpubs are not really meant to be made public; it's the addresses on the external chain that are.  And they are the same regardless of the xpub they are derived from (as long as correct derivation sub-paths are used).

The site you mentioned (which you call ‘sites’ in plural, even though they are identical) looks to me more like an engineering toolkit than a consumer product.  It calculates everything based on a derivation path.  You can enter one path and read just the xpub, then enter another path and read just the derived addresses.  I guess, the site assumes that the visitors are more likely to be interested in the addresses than in the xpub, so the default derivation path for Mycelium Wallet is the one for addresses.  An extra parameter for the sub-path could have made it easier to use, but as a toolkit, the site offers the functionality it's built for.

Oh, and your spelling of Mycelium is wrong in most instances.  ‘Celium’ is not a word.