Quote from: pointbiz on September 15, 2011, 11:29:29 PM

I'll say maybe. I'm trying to keep the interface simple, maybe an advanced tab or something would work for that.

At the moment I'm not convinced Deterministic Wallets are the way to go. People think alike and therefore the algorithms and patterns used to make Deterministic Wallets can be gamed en mass.

Consider these two possible wallet decisions:
1) using a 5-character password to create a Deterministic Wallet using some tool.
2) create a truly random private key and copy/paste it into a text file in an encrypted true crypt drive, that is protected with a 5-character password, that you back up in several locations online and offline.

I wrote a deterministic wallet generator for Casascius Bitcoin Utility. Here are my thoughts.

My utility pre-fills the passphrase field with randomized alphabetic characters as a default. If the user doesn't care, the alphabetic characters suffice. The Microsoft .NET framework offers a RNG specifically suited for cryptographic functions, and this is the source of the entropy for this random passphrase. Chances are decent that it's a good one.

If the user chooses a short passphrase, I warn him persistently about why that's a problem. I recommend to him that he simply mash keys into the text box if he must not accept the default. I don't remember the precise rules, but I require either 30+ characters of any type, or 20+ characters with at least two of each of three classes (uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols).

A deterministic generation function does one more very valuable thing from an auditability perspective that has nothing to do with recreating wallets. Supporting deterministic generation from a passphrase allows the average user to control for the possibility that the RNG in your generator isn't rigged or flawed in a non-obvious manner. If your RNG turns out to be flawed at any time down the road, it would turn into a huge liability for anyone who has ever used your generator. (Google "Debian OpenSSL key flaw" for an example of a past occurrence of this mess). On the other hand, if it produces the same deterministic wallet as any other program made for the same purpose, it can be conclusively deemed to operate as advertised.