Dealing with standardization of Bitcoin-related topics, such as terminology or protocol.
Any question related to the topic of standards and standardization of terminology or protocol
Questions tagged [standard]
26 questions
215
votes
22 answers
What is a good way to concisely explain Bitcoin?
Often I'm asked to explain Bitcoin to someone and occasionally I come up with something stellar that really nails it, but most times it's a rambling incoherent mess.
What I would like to see is a short and simple explanation of what Bitcoin is that…
Gary
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24
votes
2 answers
Bitcoin URL scheme
What is the URL scheme that is used by Bitcoin to copy transaction information directly into the client? Which versions of Bitcoin clients support it?
ThePiachu
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24
votes
4 answers
Why does the Bitcoin protocol use the little-endian notation?
Why does the Bitcoin use the litte-endian notation? It is less common than big-endian notation, thus when programming low-level applications working with Bitcoin protocol, one quite often has to create custom operations for handling the endianness…
ThePiachu
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10
votes
2 answers
Is the value of "satoshi" fixed or dynamic?
BitCoin Wiki (Transactions) states:
...1 BTC = 100,000,000 Satoshi...
Yet BitCoin Wiki (FAQ) states:
..."satoshi"... is smallest denomination currently possible
In the future when the protocol decides to support more decimal places, will the…
Pacerier
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10
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4 answers
What is the collective name for Bitcoin, Namecoin, etc?
Is there some standard term to describe all Bitcoin-like internet currencies, like Solidcoin, Namecoin and so forth? Like "currency" is to dollar, euro, yen, etc?
ThePiachu
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9
votes
5 answers
Plain text for the Bitcoin symbol
It seems that the most widely used symbol for Bitcoin is a B with two vertical lines through it1. It makes sense, as a single letter with a line or two through it is common for many currencies. Is there a plain text printing for this symbol, or…
frеdsbend
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5 answers
Which programming languages support secp256k1?
Which programming languages have some ready libraries that support Bitcoin's ECDSA curve - secp256k1?
ThePiachu
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8
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1 answer
Why is Ripple's base58 alphabet so weird?
In this answer I found out that Ripple uses a different base58 alphabet from Bitcoin. There aren't many materials on what that alphabet is, but I managed to find this reference:
The base58 dictionary for ripple is:…
ThePiachu
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7
votes
1 answer
What are the standard formats of transaction outputs?
A transaction output can have the type
Pay to public key hash, P2PKH, where the ScriptPubKey field has the format:
76 a9 14 <20-byte hash of pubkey> 88 ac
Pay to script hash, P2SH, used for e.g. multisig:
a9 14 <20-byte hash of script> 87
There is…
Thorkil Værge
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What is the canonical way of creating merkle tree branches?
I'm currently looking into creating some compact merkle tree branches to prove that a given hash was included in a given merkle root. My initial thought was to list the leaf, the merkle root and all of the hashes that the given leaf was combined…
ThePiachu
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6
votes
1 answer
Bitcoin Best Practices by the Bitcoin Foundation
The Bitcoin Foundation's Executive Director, Peter Vessenes, in his open letter states that the Foundation is aiming to
Publish a set of best practices for businesses transacting in Bitcoin, covering topics from accounting to physical and digital…
ThePiachu
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6
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1 answer
Script - OP_PUSHDATAs
When using OP_PUSHDATAs in different Scripts, how are the next bytes denoting the amount of bytes to be pushed encoded? Are they to be treated as unsigned integer, or signed (like the data that is taken from the stack?)? Are they big endian, or…
ThePiachu
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6
votes
2 answers
How to sign a message using Bitcoin private key?
How does one create a proper signature for a given message using Bitcoin private keys?
I have an input address of
5JeWZ1z6sRcLTJXdQEDdB986E6XfLAkj9CgNE4EHzr5GmjrVFpf
or
6d7f6815bd7927423a728db28c5f4ea4032a81ab8dbca06ec41476508de48a6d
I want to sign…
ThePiachu
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5
votes
1 answer
Version field in transactions, blocks, etc
A field labelled "version" appears in many contexts regarding the Bitcoin protocol. Sometimes one uses the current version of the Bitcoin client (version message), sometimes 1 is used (block, tx), why is that? What are the rules in numbering those…
ThePiachu
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3
votes
1 answer
Bitcoin Dictionary
Is there a website that aggregates all technical and jargon terms used by the Bitcoin community? In other words, is there some compact reference guide that could serve as a "Bitcoin Dictionary"?
ThePiachu
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