An exercise in creating a legacy Bitcoin address, as described here.

Usage:

1. Clone this repo
2. cd into the python project directory
3. Make a virtual environment: virtualenv -p python3 venv
4. source the virtual environment activation script - e.g. source venv/bin/activate
5. Run pip install -r requirements.txt

Run python/main.py.

For the purposes of the C++ implementation, I've used openssl to provide the necessary hashing functionality.

You can get reasonable information on the openssl functions on the Linux man pages - for example enter man SHA256_Update.

Note that the int SHA256_Final(unsigned char *md, SHA256_CTX *c) function places the message digest in md, which must have space for SHA256_DIGEST_LENGTH bytes (i.e. 32) bytes.

Bitcoin Core does not use openssl - the hashing algorithms are built in to the project.

Compile the C++ programme from the cpp directory. Run ./bin/main.

Enter a public key in hexstring format when requested. The output includes the various stages of Base58Check encoding - this is just for educational purposes.

Run ./bin/p2sh for the address output only.

• Technical background of version 1 Bitcoin addresses
• Base58 Encoding