Native Segwit vs Segwit

[swimyfish]

Can someone please explain to me in the most basic terms the difference between Native Segwit vs Segwit when dealing with Bitcoin Addresses? Is there one type preferred for use for the storage of Bitcoin? Thank you.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Native segwit, also known as bech32, has better error-detection and makes addresses lowercase which is easier to write them down by reading them. It also has better scalability and even lower fees per transaction. Although, the downside is that not all exchanges support it. To cut a long story short, it is the greatest option, but sites like bitcoin.com, that have a great influence, choose not to accept it.

It is also referred as p2wpkh. (Pay to Witness Public Key Hash)

[Oshosondy]

P2PKH- legacy, bitcoin addresses that start with 1 are legacy addresses.
P2SH- addresses that start with 3 are nested segwit
Bech32- addresses that start with bcq1 bc1are the native segwit.

For more information about nested segwit
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0049.mediawiki

For more information about native segwit
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0141.mediawiki

About transaction fee, native segwit is the cheapest.

Native segwit is also the one called segwit. Nested segwit are called compatible. Which means they question about native segwit and segwit is just that they are the same thing.

[pooya87]

If you want a 4 year old wallet (or similar tools) that has not yet been updated after all this time (hence is insecure) to be able to recognize the address you give it (like entering your address in an exchange to withdraw your funds into) you should use any of the legacy address formats such as P2PKH addresses (starting with 1) or P2SH addresses (starting with 3). Since P2SH can be any arbitrary script, it can use SegWit specific scripts so they can be SegWit addresses too. So in this case you can use Nested SegWit which is backward compatible.

If you are using any of the modern wallets (or similar tools) that have been updated over the past 4 years, you can use any address format because they will recognize it and you will have no issue. So in this case you can also use Native SegWit addresses that are using bech32 encoding and start with "bc1".

For storing funds there is absolutely no difference between new address types and old ones. P2WPKH is exactly the same as P2PKH and P2WSH is exactly the same as P2SH (if they use the same redeem script) and their nested types (P2SH-P2WPKH, and P2SH-P2WSH) are the same respectively too.

For spending funds from each of these the only difference is the transaction size and weight (weight is important for the fee you have to pay), the Native SegWit format will always consume less weight ergo requires less fee. Then the Nested SegWit ones are bigger but still smaller than legacy formats (assuming scripts are similar).

[swimyfish]

Thank you so much for the feedback. Can you send BTC from a Native Segwit address to a Segwit address?

[ranochigo]

Can you send BTC from a Native Segwit address to a Segwit address?

Yes. Segwit (or rather Nested Segwit) addresses are actually P2SH addresses with a witness script. They should be compatible with most, if not all wallets since it was introduced fairly long ago.

The compatibility of whichever addresses that you're sending to lies purely with whether your client thinks if the address type is valid. Bech32 is valid for those services/clients who have upgraded to recognise it. Otherwise, in a modern wallet, you should be able to send within all the address types.

[o_e_l_e_o]

P2SH- addresses that start with 3 are nested segwit

This is not quite accurate. Address which start with 3 are pay to script hash addresses. The script may be any number of things, from multisig to nested segwit, or 1000 other things. Therefore, although all nested segwit addresses start with 3, not all addresses which start with 3 are nested segwit. It is impossible to tell what the script of an address is until it makes a transaction and reveals said script (unless of course you own the address and set up the script yourself).

Bech32 is valid for those services/clients who have upgraded to recognise it.

I would add to this that if you are using a service which does not recognize native segwit addresses, then you move to a new service. If they have been unable to implement such a major change in the 3 and a half years since it went live, then they are almost certainly also far behind in terms of security updates, patches, vulnerabilities, and so on, not just with bitcoin but with their entire back end.

[bob123]

Can you send BTC from a Native Segwit address to a Segwit address?

You can send from any address type to any other one.
Network-wise that's not a problem at all.

The only problem can occur when dealing with outdated software.
Their sanity checks will deem a native segwit address as "invalid" because their software hasn't been updated for multiple years.

Don't use heavily outdated services, and you are fine. You can send to and receive from any address.