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DeFiChain Address Format
Just like Bitcoin, DeFiChain supports several types of addresses:
- Pay to script hash, or P2SH (The default address type)
- Pay to public key hash, or P2PKH (The legacy address type)
- Bech32 segwit addresses
This document will briefly cover how the first two are generated, and the differences between DeFiChain and Bitcoin when it comes to address generation.
We will start first with the legacy address, as it's easier to explain. A DeFiChain legacy address is generated exactly the same way as a Bitcoin legacy address, you may refer to this document to see the specific steps involved (Quite technical): https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses
There is a major difference however, in the final step, Base58Check encoding, Bitcoin address prepend a 1 to the start of the address, where as DeFiChain addresses prepend an 8.
P2SH are also generated much the same way as Bitcoin. More info can be found here: https://medium.com/coinmonks/how-to-generate-a-bitcoin-address-step-by-step-9d7fcbf1ad0b#b764
The main difference here is that the P2SH addresses in DeFiChain start with 'd' rather '3' for Bitcoin.
- Pubkey address: '8' vs '1' for Bitcoin
- PS2H address: 'd' vs '3' for Bitcoin
DeFiChain also supports other types of addresses such as bech32 addresses, although these are not the default address types. For bech32 addresses, the starting identifier in DeFiChain is 'df'.