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It is known that Ethereum addresses are generated by hashing the pubkey (ref. this post). However, I'm not certain that a single pubkey corresponds to a single address.

Use case

I would like to implement a schema of token exchanges where a user can send a single token only once (a kind of voting). The user generates a keypair and derives an address from the public key. The user then discards the keypair. I would like to be sure that a voter can't generate another address using the same keypair causing me to count his token twice.

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    Related: Is each Ethereum address shared by (theoretically) 2 ** 96 private keys?
    – Richard Horrocks
    Commented Dec 12, 2017 at 10:26
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    Could you clarify whether you're asking "Can the same address come from two different private keys?" (Yes, but it's hard to find such a collision.) or "Can the same private key produce two different addresses?" (No.) or maybe "Can the same public key produce two different addresses?" (No for the same reason.)
    – user19510
    Commented Dec 12, 2017 at 14:15

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As pointed out in the comments:

Could you clarify whether you're asking "Can the same address come from two different private keys?" (Yes, but it's hard to find such a collision.) or "Can the same private key produce two different addresses?" (No.) or maybe "Can the same public key produce two different addresses?" (No for the same reason.) – smarx

answers my question perfectly. Thank you.

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Why don't you solve the "double spending" problem simply by keeping balances, as with the balances variable in a standard contract?

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  • The idea is as follows: there will be a contract that will mint the tokens. The number of voters is well known (n - the total number of voters). Any new user is able to withdraw a single token from the mint. The withdrawal history can be tracked by keeping track if an address has withdrawn it's token from the mint. If an address tries to withdraw a token from the mint twice, it will fail. However, this only makes sense if only a single address can be derived from a public key. A balance variable can't solve this issue if the opposite is true.
    – user3223162
    Commented Dec 12, 2017 at 14:02

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