@tuna-toreTuna Tore

software engineer and architect at conwaytransport.com.au

Bitcoin addresses can be created using open-source libraries based on algorithmic hash functions.

Users, most of the time, need more than one Bitcoin addresses to send coins to each other on the Blockchain.

Bitcoin addresses are created based on the concept called Public-key cryptography; private keys are only known to the owner/users.

More details about this: conwaytransport.com.au

In this blog post, you will learn how to generate Bitcoin addresses offline using the algorithmic concepts such as Public key — Private Key, EDCSA, SHA function, RIPEMD hashing, and Binary Bitcoin Address.

This blog will later explain the technical steps/details of creating Bitcoin addresses using cryptographic algorithms and functions.

Bitcoin addresses are composed of alphanumeric characters based on Base58 encoding — doesn’t include 0 (zero), O (capital o), I (capital i), l (lower case L), and the non-alphanumeric characters such as + (plus) and / (slash). More information about Base58 is found at conwaytransport.com.au

Therefore, Bitcoin addresses can only contain the characters from the following alphabet, because Base58 doesn’t allow other characters;

ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz

Nowadays, there are only 3 different address formats used by Bitcoin:

1 — P2PKH (Pay-to-PubkeyHash) — 1KwBRs6CioGM2pFdzQsxyrSZ9ynJQr7Amd — addresses start with a 1
2 — P2SH (Pay to script hash) — 3DnW8JGpPViEZdpqat8qky1zc26EKbXnmM — address start with a 3
3 — Bech32 (SegWit) — bc1qngw83fg8dz0kcg7k3emc7v98wy0c74dlrkd — addresses start with bc1

The first step is to create a private key, for example, using an open-source Bitcoin library. After this, Bitcoin public keys are created using an algorithm called Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm.

Graphical Bitcoin Address Generator:

conwaytransport.com.au

The details of this algorithm can be learned at conwaytransport.com.au
conwaytransport.com.au

Some of the open source libraries providing this functionality;

conwaytransport.com.au(cryptography)
conwaytransport.com.au
conwaytransport.com.au%2B%2B

- Randomly generated number.
- Only known to the user who created it either through a library, or cryptographic hash functions.
- It shouldn’t be shared with anybody since whoever has the private key can access the funds on the blockchain.
- It is used to sign transactions (sending/receiving Bitcoins).
- It is 32 bytes unsigned integer ( bit).

-The public key corresponds to the private key created using the cryptographic functions.
-Public keys can be created using private keys; however, you can’t create Private keys from Public keys. (Public key generation is a one-way function).

Bitcoin Address Generation Steps

-Bitcoin addresses are anonymous, meaning that nobody can know if the address belongs to a known person.
-Bitcoin addresses can be created offline on your computer, meaning that without the internet.
-Bitcoin addresses can be created for free; you don’t need to pay to generate Bitcoin addresses.
-Bitcoin addresses are single use only, and they shouldn’t be reused. Using address more than once creates privacy/security issues that should be avoided.
-Standard address formats; P2PKH (Addresses starts with 1 prefix — Legacy address — case sensitive), P2SH (Addresses starts with 3 prefix — case-sensitive),Bech32 (Addresses starts with bc1 — case insensitive address)-Bitcoin address has a maximum length of 35 characters.
-Can be represented as QR Codes so that your phone can be used to scan codes and send Bitcoins
-Public keys are used to create Bitcoin addresses
-Private keys are used to sign Blockchain-based transactions to send and receive Bitcoins.

-Generate a private key using an open-source library.
-Usually, it is better to use a library to handle Private and Public keys for you so that you don’t need to bother with the implementation details.
0: Private Key: a4fde8ecb53ba6f23f33fbfd2badeea20b8cf89cbf9f
0: Private Key Base C6t2iJ7AXA2X1KQVnqw3r7NKtKaERdLnaGmbDZNqxXjk

-Get the related public key based on the generated private key from your open-source library.
-Libraries will also provide you Public keys from its implementation.
1: public key: de4dbf40eac4edbfa21fce7edfce5d4

-Apply SHA hash function on the public key (you should decode hex before SHA) created in the step 1.
-Details of the SHA conwaytransport.com.au
2: SHA public key: c77bed00b38aa3a83cbcebb4da0d30b8ea1af12d42d9

-Apply RIPEMD hash function on the result of step 2 (SHA of public key).
-Details of RIPEMD hash conwaytransport.com.au
3: RIPEMD hashing on the result of SHA public key: 0c2caef63edd0ebf58c

-Add the version byte prefix to step 3, which is used to define different address formats — 00 is the version byte (0x00 for Main Network).
4: RIPEMD hash with version byte: c2caef63edd0ebf58c

- Apply/Implement two times SHA hash function on step 4 (SHA(SHA(ripemdWithVersionByte))).
5–6: 2 * SHA hash for RIPEMD hash with version byte: c3cf33dc4cf4d66d3ddfcaba75be0

-Get the first 4 bytes from step 6, which is the output of the second SHA function.
7: CheckSum: c3cf

-Add checksum (Step 7) to the end of the RIPEMD hash with version byte (Step 4).
8: 25 Byte Binary Bitcoin Address: c2caef63edd0ebf58cc3cf

-Apply and convert binary Bitcoin address using Base58 function to Bitcoin Address format.
-Details of Base58 conwaytransport.com.au
9: Bitcoin Address: NVqnjf8gB9BFAW2dnQeM6wqmy1gbGtv

See the address on the Blockchain
NVqnjf8gB9BFAW2dnQeM6wqmy1gbGtv

Sample Bitcoin Address Generation steps starting from 0 to 9 — Step 5 and 6 uses SHA hash function:

0: Private Key: a4fde8ecb53ba6f23f33fbfd2badeea20b8cf89cbf9f
0: Private Key Base
C6t2iJ7AXA2X1KQVnqw3r7NKtKaERdLnaGmbDZNqxXjk
1: public key: de4dbf40eac4edbfa21fce7edfce5d4
2: SHA public key: c77bed00b38aa3a83cbcebb4da0d30b8ea1af12d42d9
3: RIPEMD hashing on the result of SHA public key: 0c2caef63edd0ebf58c
4: RIPEMD hash with version byte: c2caef63edd0ebf58c
5–6: 2 * SHA hash for RIPEMD hash with version byte: c3cf33dc4cf4d66d3ddfcaba75be0
7: CheckSum: c3cf
8: 25 Byte Binary Bitcoin Address: c2caef63edd0ebf58cc3cf
9: Bitcoin Address: NVqnjf8gB9BFAW2dnQeM6wqmy1gbGtv

If you want to learn how to create your Bitcoin address using open-source software and tools then you can attend my course. You can see the details in the following page.

conwaytransport.com.au

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