BIP-44
Also: multi-account hierarchy
wallets · intermediate
The five-level derivation path standard that organizes BIP-32 trees into purpose/coin/account/change/index — legacy P2PKH addresses.
BIP-44 standardizes how wallets organize the BIP-32 derivation tree so two different wallets recovering the same seed find the same coins. It defines a five-level path: m / purpose' / coin_type' / account' / change / address_index.
Each level has a meaning. purpose' is fixed at 44' for this BIP; later BIPs ([84](/glossary/bip84), [86](/glossary/bip86), and BIP-49) reuse the structure with different purpose numbers. coin_type' is 0' for Bitcoin mainnet, 1' for testnet, registered in SLIP-44. account' lets a wallet separate user-facing accounts. change is 0 for receive addresses and 1 for change. address_index is the leaf, the actual key you receive at.
BIP-44 maps to P2PKH addresses — the classic 1... addresses with HASH160 of the public key wrapped in Base58Check. It's the oldest standardized path and the one most older wallets still default to. Modern wallets typically pair BIP-44 with [BIP-84](/glossary/bip84) (native segwit) or [BIP-86](/glossary/bip86) (taproot) as a fallback for compatibility with legacy software.
Reference: [github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0044.mediawiki](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0044.mediawiki).