Unique Multi-Signature Wallets with Weighted Keys

There’s really a lot to gain with asymmetric weighted multi-sig wallets. It’s like you have keys where not all of them are equal. For example, in a regular 3-of-5 setup, all keys are treated the same, but that might not suit everyone. Think about businesses, where the CFO's key should definitely carry more weight than a random manager’s key. Or even family members who have contingency keys; their key shouldn’t match yours in importance.

That’s not completely right. Check out Liana wallet. It supports Miniscript and lets users craft advanced multisig settings, just like you described. You can set flexible spending conditions and even manage multiple backup keys however you want.

But how's that gonna work with regular threshold signature algorithms? As far as I know, there aren’t any multisig algorithms that deal with weight like that. They operate on whole keys, not fractions. Emulating fractions might be the way to go by using a numerator for how many keys you get and a denominator for the total key count. And it could work without any code tweaks.

Yeah, that’s a bit of a roundabout way. You could use a Taproot address with a specific tapscript that outlines all spending conditions based on the chosen weights or rules. I mentioned Taproot because it hides the path and spending conditions, which is great for privacy and helps reduce transaction size.

Let’s say we got 5 users: alice, bob, carol, david, and eva. You could set up a 3-of-5 multisig using miniscript where alice and bob are two of the signers and the last one can be anyone left. We could test this out using the old bdk playground, but it’s gone now.

I’m not too focused on the technical complexities here. Multisig is all about security and sharing the load. But if you start weighing some keys more, you’re just concentrating power, and that can make high-value keyholders really vulnerable to attacks. If the CFO’s key gets compromised, it could totally jeopardize wallet security more than a straightforward multisig.

Honestly, I don’t know much about miniscript. I probably need to look into this again. Might even post something on my old site, notatether.com.

You can’t just go with 2 of 3 here. If the wallet setup has customizable options, it can be adjusted to balance the weights. Like OP said, in a 3 of 5 setup, the more weight equals double keys. If the CFO sets it up, he could keep things discreet and not mention his key’s greater weight.

You don’t need to give them extra keys. Just change the smart contract or script locking up the coins. In a 3 of 5 setup, make the CFO’s pubkey and signature mandatory for a higher weight. That’s how you can do it.