Popular Science | What are the Bitcoin addresses?

Author | Huohuo Produced | Vernacular Blockchain (ID: hellobtc)

In the encryption world, the wallet address is as important as the "bank card account number" and "receipt address", and any operation is inseparable from it. With the birth of the Ordinals protocol, it promoted the adoption of Bitcoin based on Segregated Witness and Taproot upgrades. , which makes many people use special address formats such as "bc1p" for the first time. So how many formats of wallet addresses do Bitcoin have, and what are their characteristics? Let’s do some popular science together today…

01 What is a Bitcoin address?

A Bitcoin address is used to send and receive Bitcoins, just like a traditional bank account. Anyone with your bank account can send you Bitcoins, and you can also transfer Bitcoins to other accounts. A Bitcoin address is a string of letters and numbers. Here are a few examples:

These Bitcoin addresses will show where the Bitcoins are being received and sent from, telling people where the Bitcoins are coming from and where they are going. It's actually like an email system for sending and receiving emails, except in the Bitcoin context, the email content is Bitcoin, the email address is the Bitcoin address, and the mailbox is the Bitcoin wallet. However, it is worth noting that a single address does not necessarily mean a single user. There may be a group of people behind an address, and a person may also have multiple addresses.

02 Bitcoin address type classification

As you can see from the picture above, Bitcoin addresses all start with the prefix 1, 3 or bc1. Apart from this, there is no other beginning. Why is this? This is because they use a different address format. In fact, there are four main types of Bitcoin address: 1. Legacy/Payment Public Key Hash (P2PKH) address. This type of address is a traditional Bitcoin address, called Legacy addresses are also called Pay-To-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) addresses because when Bitcoin was launched in 2009, they were generated from the generation of a public/private key pair, which at the time was the only way to create an address. Today, this type of address uses the most space in transactions and is therefore the most expensive address type. However, such addresses are easy to identify because they all start with "1". Example: 15f12gEh2DFcHyhSyu7v3Bji5T3CJa9Smn Currently you will only use this type of address when using some old wallets that are incompatible with the new address. 2. Pay-to-Script-Hash (P2SH) address Compared with the traditional address starting with "1", the P2SH address is not a hash of the public key, but a hash involving certain technical scripts, available For transfers that require multi-signatures, you can even use Segregated Witness to save transaction fees. Sending to a P2SH address is about 26% cheaper than a wallet using an old address. Example: 35PBEaofpUeH8VnnNSorM1QZsadrZoQp4N 3. Segregated Witness Address (SegWit) Bech32 Address Segwit address is also called Bech32 address, and their characteristic is that they start with bc1q. This type of Bitcoin address reduces the amount of information stored in the transaction. They do not store signatures and scripts in the transaction, but in the witness. Therefore, compared to P2SH addresses, Segwit addresses can save approximately 16% of transaction fees, compared to traditional address and save over 38%. Because of this cost saving, it is the most commonly used Bitcoin transaction address. Example: bc1q42lja79elem0anu8q8s3h2n687re9jax556pcc However, some exchanges and wallets do not yet support Segwit addresses, so users will be prompted to send them a P2SH address. This is why most wallets still include the option to create a P2SH or even old address wallet. 4. Taproot address In order to improve the efficiency of block space and improve costs, SegWit has introduced some changes in the way addresses are constructed.Therefore, based on the SegWit address, a Taproot address starting with "bc1p" was developed, which is translated as the main root address. This type of address further reduces storage space, improves transaction efficiency, and provides better privacy. Example: bc1pmzfrwwndsqmk5yh69yjr5lfgfg4ev8c0tsc06e

03 Summary

Bitcoin addresses have some similarities to modern bank accounts in that bank accounts are also used in transactions to send assets. However, for Bitcoin addresses, Bitcoins are sent. Although there are different types of Bitcoin addresses, these addresses are used in the same way and have cross-compatibility features, so Bitcoin can circulate between different addresses. However, a warm reminder that encryption security has always been an issue worthy of concern. Please be sure to check the address carefully before sending encrypted assets to prevent unnecessary losses.

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