Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Development & Technical Discussion => Topic started by: coin revolution on January 22, 2017, 04:18:25 PM



Title: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: coin revolution on January 22, 2017, 04:18:25 PM
As far as I know, every wallet has different address formats. Can I find out which wallet software is used from the address information?


Title: Re: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: achow101 on January 22, 2017, 04:29:01 PM
Wallets do not use different address formats. The address format (base58 check encoding in general) is a standard format in Bitcoin and used by all Bitcoin wallets.


Title: Re: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: coin revolution on January 22, 2017, 04:35:50 PM
Wallets do not use different address formats. The address format (base58 check encoding in general) is a standard format in Bitcoin and used by all Bitcoin wallets.

So all bitcoin wallets use the base58 encoding system? Core, electrum, multibit etc.

Does this apply to online wallets? Blockchain.info, xapo etc.


Title: Re: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: achow101 on January 22, 2017, 04:43:39 PM
Wallets do not use different address formats. The address format (base58 check encoding in general) is a standard format in Bitcoin and used by all Bitcoin wallets.

So all bitcoin wallets use the base58 encoding system? Core, electrum, multibit etc.

Does this apply to online wallets? Blockchain.info, xapo etc.
Yes. All Bitcoin wallets who don't want to make life difficult for their users will use the standard Base58 Check Encoding for addresses.


Title: Re: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: ArcCsch on January 23, 2017, 03:54:05 AM
Wallets do not use different address formats. The address format (base58 check encoding in general) is a standard format in Bitcoin and used by all Bitcoin wallets.
Unless you are using a vanity address, which certainly is not an anonymity improvement.


Title: Re: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: kolloh on January 23, 2017, 04:21:58 AM
Wallets do not use different address formats. The address format (base58 check encoding in general) is a standard format in Bitcoin and used by all Bitcoin wallets.
Unless you are using a vanity address, which certainly is not an anonymity improvement.

Vanity addresses are still in base58 format and the format isn't changed on a vanity address. Vanity addresses are just brute forced to reflect some vanity at the front but the format is still the same as a normal address.


Title: Re: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: fasdorcas on January 29, 2017, 09:25:09 AM
i don't think that we can find the software by using the bitcoin address because al0 software use the same address format (base58 check encoding in general) and it is very difficult to find the software using the bitcoin address..........


Title: Re: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: Variogam on January 29, 2017, 04:02:42 PM
What about compressed/uncompressed private keys? After someone spend from Bitcoin address you know whether he used compressed or uncompressed private key. So is there list of wallets using either compressed or uncompressed private keys?


Title: Re: Can I make wallet estimates from Bitcoin address?
Post by: achow101 on January 29, 2017, 04:40:22 PM
What about compressed/uncompressed private keys? After someone spend from Bitcoin address you know whether he used compressed or uncompressed private key. So is there list of wallets using either compressed or uncompressed private keys?
While that could still work, it may not necessarily be very effective. Nearly all wallets nowadays use compressed keys (except for Armory, that's being worked on right now). However some people may be using either old software or an old wallet which the new software does not upgrade to the compressed keys.