P2PKH
Also: Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash, legacy address
cryptography · intermediate
The original Bitcoin address format. Addresses start with '1'. Locks bitcoin to a hash of a public key.
P2PKH was the dominant address type for Bitcoin's first decade. The locking script is short: OP_DUP OP_HASH160 <20-byte hash> OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG. To spend, you provide the full public key and a signature; the script hashes the public key, compares it to the committed hash, and checks the signature.
The "hash of a public key" approach is a privacy improvement over P2PK (which committed to the bare key): the public key only appears on-chain when you spend, never when you receive. It's also a hedge against any future weakening of ECDSA — until you spend, only the hash is visible.
P2PKH addresses are Base58Check encoded, case-sensitive, and produce a high error rate when typed by hand. SegWit (P2WPKH, bech32, all-lowercase) and Taproot (P2TR, bech32m) are direct successors. New wallets default to one of those; P2PKH lingers mostly for compatibility with old systems.