Bitcoin Address Types Compared: Legacy (1), SegWit (bc1q), and Taproot (bc1p)
Understand the fee differences, block weight savings, and privacy benefits between P2PKH, P2SH, Native SegWit, and Taproot.
Visual guide to Bitcoin address prefixes, witness data separation, and how switching to Native SegWit immediately cuts your transaction fees by 38%.
1. The Evolution of Bitcoin Transactions
Segregated Witness (SegWit, BIP-141) separated cryptographic signature witness data from transaction base data, granting witness bytes a 75% fee discount (1 vByte = 4 weight units).
Taproot (BIP-341) introduced Schnorr signatures and MAST (Merkelized Alternative Script Trees), making multi-sig transactions look identical to standard single-key transfers on-chain.
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