Еволюція адрес Bitcoin: від спадкових до Taproot

Bitcoin addresses have undergone a fascinating evolution over the past 15 years, each upgrade solving real problems and enabling new possibilities. Let’s break down the four main types you’ll encounter:

The OG: Legacy Addresses (P2PKH)

Starting with “1”, these are the original Bitcoin addresses from 2009. They use a simple public key hash system and are derived via BIP44. While they work fine, they have downsides: larger transaction data and higher fees. Think of them as the first generation smartphone—functional, but outdated.

The Bridge: Nested SegWit (P2SH)

Introduced in 2017, addresses starting with “3” were designed as a compatibility layer. They support multisig functionality and use the BIP49 derivation path. Their real purpose? Letting old wallets transition to new tech without breaking. It’s like having a backward-compatible adapter.

The Modern Standard: Native SegWit (Bech32)

Addresses beginning with “bc1” launched via BIP173 in late 2017. This is where things got interesting. Native SegWit separates transaction signatures from transaction data—a technique called “Segregated Witness.”

The innovation: transaction data shrinks, fees drop, and block capacity effectively increases to 4MB. It’s case-insensitive and uses Base32 encoding instead of Base58, making it easier to type and scan.

Bitcoin Cash split off precisely because some nodes rejected this upgrade. But SegWit won, and now it powers most of Bitcoin’s active addresses.

The Latest: Taproot (bc1p)

Launched as a soft fork in November 2021, Taproot brought three game-changing improvements:

Schnorr Signatures (BIP340): Multiple signatures in one transaction can be aggregated into a single signature. Privacy boost? Nobody can tell which inputs were signed by which party. Speed boost? More transactions fit per block.

Script Optimization (BIP341): More efficient data storage for transactions.

Tapscript (BIP342): A flexible scripting language using Merkleized Abstract Syntax Trees. It only reveals the contract conditions that were actually executed, hiding the rest. This unlocked the entire era of Bitcoin inscriptions.

Why This Matters

Taproot’s flexibility enabled the 2024 inscription boom. Projects like Ordinals (ORDI) became possible only because Taproot allowed arbitrary data to be embedded in transactions in novel ways.

The takeaway? Bitcoin didn’t just solve a problem in 2009 and call it done. Every upgrade—from SegWit to Taproot—addressed real scalability bottlenecks while maintaining backward compatibility. That’s why Bitcoin survived the “block size wars” that fragmented other chains.