What is the "4" prefix?

[rico666]

I know 1 (P2PKH) and 3 (P2SH). But what is the "4" prefix?

4PXAyBiWgTo2EaNvxbpLz8d4edj2taEWux
4GY6DnSvHiGou5G9akzHrXvXqwyz5zmTSR
...

etc.

Blockchain.info says only "Unrecognized Address Version 8", but the blockchain parser finds (at least) like 650 of these addresses with funds on them.

Rico

[1714106330]

1714106330

[1714106330]

1714106330

[achow101]

There is no "4" prefix.

which blockchain parser?

[johnjacksonbtc]

I know 1 (P2PKH) and 3 (P2SH). But what is the "4" prefix?

4PXAyBiWgTo2EaNvxbpLz8d4edj2taEWux
4GY6DnSvHiGou5G9akzHrXvXqwyz5zmTSR
...

etc.

Blockchain.info says only "Unrecognized Address Version 8", but the blockchain parser finds (at least) like 650 of these addresses with funds on them.

Rico

How about txids that use these addresses? searchrawtransactions 4PXAyBiWgTo2EaNvxbpLz8d4edj2taEWux says Invalid Bitcoin address (code -5).

[rico666]

There is no "4" prefix.

which blockchain parser?

Hmm...

https://github.com/znort987/blockparser

So I'll investigate what went wrong. I do not have the txids, but the hash160 values, these are the 1st few occurences, it even claims there is more than 0.5BTC on some of these addresses. The "allBallances2.txt" file is simply the output of the parser.

Code:

# grep -P ' 4\w{32,33} ' allBalances2.txt 
              0.63091998 418ec906ca28b9b2ef8f885cc234c48ccbc73b37 4KgTrERcsyEoUPjZfCqVzNThm2Wvhs4FYN      7 Sun Feb 22 13:10:59 2015       5 Thu Mar 12 17:59:26 2015
              0.52101996 6b80aa0622b46609c610e0ddbeb6cd90641b68ee 4PWFK8wMGKSfU6Gq359onFkDssXngq2UJe      2 Tue Feb 17 19:03:41 2015       0 Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
              0.50071996 b08f5c2f1c832e85df769a75c632d5c39289b1a6 4VoPYTxb4E4KaE5T4eUvTmp4KA5ij8wUhA      1 Tue Mar 17 15:24:11 2015       0 Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
              0.32139994 af4e1224aabc02227b302870c0fd9102b3181cea 4Vgkeu6uJB2Nb8RYSsdcPv6wW99Y1gBU1Y      4 Sun Jan  4 22:39:15 2015       2 Sun Jan  4 03:54:29 2015
              0.30159978 ac62d3225589ef4f3862f2f0818a807c2dc3e52d 4VRKVKy859PomBgSzYn5tHmoWaMw2kcdi1     12 Fri Jan 23 20:55:16 2015      11 Fri Jan 23 20:59:42 2015
              0.28169996 395b418aabf61ea1e9ffa41d9442f9851239d74b 4Jw6iPC7gMbYgKod2ndjk1Lmyfe9RbqdkV     30 Wed Nov 12 21:39:03 2014      27 Thu Nov 20 17:08:20 2014
              0.24139996 38e363651868b314617a0ac65d368754fef0777a 4Jtd7pptR9hyUP7Pgxg9QdBs4mRoeKa7ra     29 Wed Nov 12 13:46:52 2014      27 Thu Nov 20 17:08:20 2014
              0.23896730 30d064e4d73b87043f220a24ad40c8bf49ebe404 4J9vxZ7SgrEPUc6pYo8u9qwRUNGpkkATCx   2498 Thu Sep 18 19:26:37 2014       0 Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
              0.23680000 ebee9d9575709dc6bb085dc22de367bcf2d27e22 4bDKXFRkcbma3V8bKm821QJX5gMXXFgBry      1 Mon Sep 16 07:55:31 2013       0 Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
              0.22962737 c348bf3dc2b24b6a00b163f24846eb739789b145 4XWPnq3T7bYLucn5c1Ng3gSDv1hrMKiFWR    108 Wed Dec 10 22:23:17 2014     102 Wed Dec 10 22:25:55 2014
              0.22119991 8d2c36da22d6eaf04e502cc1e0cd6bea9926a1e5 4SaH7yiUc7JuaxyZ286ZTunuKGNmvDrWmP      8 Fri Mar 20 22:01:46 2015       7 Fri Mar 20 22:15:28 2015
              0.21787992 e1dfb1d5a3edc97c8d065ae890a8ae55973beee0 4aJ8tcHkSJjK7TEhNEHuzyTDA74v9duBMF     29 Mon Sep  1 19:24:40 2014      21 Mon Sep  8 22:26:45 2014
              0.20031998 f4a78560353020893de0ccc63f749c05bba70a08 4c1SSEpzrbTmXZAsyB9C4YVzRRF68i8PYK      1 Wed Mar 11 14:09:49 2015       0 Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
              0.15030999 e9ece9c4a971a85952904ea7235455723e243ec3 4b2i8adrerjR3DVkNXSyyv2F3by9uyBV5N      7 Wed Mar 11 19:31:27 2015       6 Sun Feb 22 13:10:59 2015
              0.12069996 6eb0f99dd234790a3a16b7c3bb234fb88dfc86c5 4Po7DQxeBCUmSPMeNVrEDrm8eaFoUPkqNT      1 Mon Dec 15 15:11:35 2014       0 Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
              0.11066900 072da378fb395effb6e879f209697d9a6af84721 4EMnHEc9LfuBiwg7sDhz9zCXQz6Z72shYq      1 Fri Nov  8 05:37:14 2013       0 Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
              0.10740000 3b6c90466179c3c46c876970956b5ec221f29daa 4K82oKLCEXLoxqUBLVhKFDAJhrqTc3jgf9     94 Thu Dec 11 14:12:08 2014      87 Thu Dec 11 14:15:13 2014
              0.08901999 16c9867d886b065ee2294e92fc167ce5a806fb11 4FnKAKKvPJYrNF4d2mD5HBt4NEUhjtm5gm    111 Wed Dec 10 23:00:41 2014     106 Wed Dec 10 23:18:00 2014
              0.08343998 802dac6b2a550d7f7e7bb9abf012ab68182365d7 4RPa5shXjjFi4sPzMbwng7g3KsHfdLiV9H    107 Wed Dec  3 19:00:34 2014     102 Thu Dec  4 23:30:58 2014

Rico

[achow101]

I don't know what is wrong, but it is clearly a bug in the blockchain parser software.

[rico666]

I don't know what is wrong, but it is clearly a bug in the blockchain parser software.

I think so too. Any recommendation of alternative blockchain parsers? I don't need anything fancy (not even fast), I just need addresses with funds on them. I would prefer something bug-free of course. 

Rico

[DannyHamilton]

It's not a bug, it's an intended feature.

From the github page that you linked to:

How does blockparser deal with multi-sig transactions ?
--------------------------------------------------------

    AFAIK, there are two types of multi-sig transactions:

        1) Pay-to-script (which is in fact more general than multisig). This one is
           easy, because it pays to a hash, which can readily be converted to an
           address that starts with the character '3' instead of '1'

        2) Naked multi-sig transactions. These are harder, because the output of
           the transactions does not neatly map to a specific bitcoin address. I
           think I have found a neat work-around: I compute:

                 hash160(M, N, sortedListOfAddresses)

           which can now be properly mapped to a bitcoin address. To mark the fact
           that this addres is neither a "pay to script" (type '3') nor a
           "pay to pubkey or pubkeyhash" (type '1'), I prefix them with '4'

           Note : this may be worthy of an actual BIP. If someone writes one,
           I'll happily adjust the code.

           Note : this trick is only a blockparser thing. This means that these
           new address types starting with a '4' won't be recognized by other
           bitcoin implementations (such as blockchain.info)

[rico666]

It's not a bug, it's an intended feature.

Thanks Danny for pointing that out. Very interesting and ... RTFM ... I guess.


Rico