Blockchain account migration

After a key change, other people may still send assets to an old address. This patent describes deprecating that address, linking it to a new address and routing later incoming transfers under the disclosed rules.

Connecting the addresses

Claim 1 describes a migration transaction containing the old address, new address, new public key and a signature made with the original private key. The chain uses the relationship when processing later transactions addressed to the old account. Claims 6 and 7 describe following the migration ancestry, including an intermediate account.

That flow needs the original private key. It does not establish recovery after that key has been completely lost.

History and assets

Retiring a key for future operations need not remove the basis for checking older records. Claim 5 addresses verifying pre-migration signatures with the old public key. The claims also distinguish transferring movable tokens from cases where non-transferable tokens remain with the original account.

These are rules in the disclosed design. Support in a network, wallet or SDK depends on its implementation. Migration should not be read as automatically moving every credential, application file or decryption key.

Further reading

New keys, old address: where does the next transfer go? follows the mechanism and checks a specific SDK source revision.

The application was published as US20210119807A1 on April 22, 2021. That publication and this grant belong to the same application.

Patent record

Read the grant and access its PDF. This records the grant event; it is not a current audit of maintenance fees, ownership changes or legal enforceability.

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