Metamask: Why does the BIP44 derivation path generate the same address in MetaMask as the Ledger Live derivation path?

Ledger Live and MetaMask wallets have different derivation paths, as shown in the code snippet below:

const LEDGER_LIVE_PATH =m/44'/60'/0'/0/0';
const BIP44_PATH = m/44'/...

MetaMask code

In the MetaMask codebase, we can see how derivation paths are encoded in an address:

const generateAddress = (path) => {
const [address] = path.split('/');
return${address}/${getChildren(address)};
};
const getChildren = (address) => {
// For simplicity, let's assume that this function extracts the child addresses from the BIP44 path
// In reality, this would involve parsing the BIP44 output and extracting the individual address components
const children = [];
for (let i = 1; i < address.length; i += 8) {
children.push(address.substring(i, i + 8));
}
return children;
};

Why the same derivation path in both wallets

Now that we understand how derivation paths work, let’s see why MetaMask generates the same address for both Ledger Live and BIP44 derivation paths:

In the “generateAddress” function, we simply take the BIP44 path as input and split it into individual addresses using the “/” character. We then concatenate these child addresses to create the final address.

The key insight here is that by encoding the BIP44 path into the address, we can process each child address independently. In other words, if we have a BIP44 path of "m/44"/60'/0'/0/0, it is equivalent to a single address with four parts: "m/44"/60'/0/".

In the MetaMask codebase, we do not explicitly encode each sub-address into a separate address. Instead, we process the entire derivation path as a whole and concatenate the resulting addresses.

As a result, both Ledger Live and BIP44 derivation paths generate the same address in MetaMask. At first glance, this might seem contradictory, but it is actually a consequence of how Metamask handles encoding BIP44 paths into addresses.

Conclusion