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Bug 29005 - Add support for secp256k1 curve
Summary: Add support for secp256k1 curve
Status: RESOLVED MOVED
Alias: None
Product: Web Cryptography
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Web Cryptography API Document (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ryan Sleevi
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Reported: 2015-07-29 19:45 UTC by Rajesh Jayaraman
Modified: 2016-05-24 00:34 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Rajesh Jayaraman 2015-07-29 19:45:14 UTC 
Bitcoin uses the secp256k1 curve for generating signing keys. Even though this is not a standard NIST curve, it is part of the published specifications by SECG (see: http://www.secg.org/sec2-v2.pdf).

Moreover, a number of browser based (both plugins and web page based) bitcoin wallets use the SJCL (https://crypto.stanford.edu/sjcl/) library for bitcoin transaction creation. This is less desirable than native browser support for cryptographic operations. Adding this curve to the Web Crypto standard would allow browser vendors to include this as part of their standard offering.
Comment 1 Ryan Sleevi 2015-07-29 21:30:30 UTC 
This was already discussed on Bug 24444, with some broader (related) discussion on Bug 25839.

You can also see past discussion at https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webcrypto-comments/2013Dec/0000.html

At the minimum, the next steps are to write a new specification detailing how it would work and convincing the WG of adoption and vendors to implement.

Speaking purely as a single vendor, there are no plans for Chromium to support this curve.
Comment 2 Mark Watson 2016-05-24 00:34:49 UTC 
Moved to https://github.com/w3c/webcrypto/issues/82