P2PKH (Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash)
Bitcoin's original, 'legacy' address format, recognizable by addresses starting with the number '1', requiring a single matching private key to spend.
Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash, or P2PKH, is Bitcoin's original "legacy" address format, producing addresses that start with the digit "1." A P2PKH transaction locks funds to the hash of a single public key, and spending those funds simply requires providing a valid signature from the corresponding private key — the most basic and straightforward Bitcoin spending condition available.
P2PKH predates both P2SH (see Kaavon's "P2SH (Pay-to-Script-Hash)" glossary definition) addresses, which support more complex spending conditions like multisig, and native SegWit Bech32 (see Kaavon's "Bech32 (Native SegWit Address)" glossary definition) addresses, which offer lower fees and better error detection. P2PKH remains fully functional and widely supported today, but transactions using it are generally somewhat more expensive to send than equivalent SegWit transactions, since it doesn't benefit from SegWit's transaction-size efficiency.
Examples
- A Bitcoin address starting with the digit '1' uses the original P2PKH format, Bitcoin's simplest and oldest address type.
- A P2PKH transaction is typically somewhat more expensive to send than an equivalent native SegWit transaction, since it doesn't benefit from SegWit's size-reduction efficiency.