Bitcoin's wallet-backup draft remembers where you put the furniture.

BIP 139 proposes a common export format for Bitcoin wallet metadata: accounts, labels, transaction records and other information that keys alone cannot recreate. The draft entered the BIPs repository on 24 October and features in Bitcoin Optech's 30 October newsletter. It is a proposal, not a wallet-wide rollout.

A wallet can contain considerably more than the keys needed to spend coins. People label transactions, organise accounts and record which outputs they want to leave untouched. Some of that information cannot be reconstructed from the blockchain when they switch applications or restore a backup.

The proposal gives that extra information a shared structure in a JSON file. Its aim is to let one application export records that another can understand, instead of each pair of wallet products needing a separate converter. A small required core and optional fields accommodate wallets with different features.

The separation from secret-key backups is deliberate. The specification forbids mainnet secret signing keys and mnemonic seeds in the export. It permits a private silent-payment scan key, which has a different role, and warns that other metadata can still contain sensitive information. An export should therefore not be treated as harmless just because it cannot ordinarily spend coins.

BIP 139 remains marked Draft, with its reference implementation listed as to be determined. The practical benefit depends on applications implementing compatible import and export. This is an explainer of a current interoperability proposal, not a claim that restoring a seed now restores every label or that users should change their backup arrangements.