Ethereum: Why P2PK Scripts Don’t Have Their Own Addresses?
In the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, addresses play a crucial role in mapping to specific wallets and blockchain scripts. In this article, we will look at why Ethereum Public Key (P2PK) scripts don’t have their own addresses.
What is ScriptPubKey?
Before we explore the reasons why P2PK scripts don’t have their own addresses, let’s quickly review what ScriptPubKey is. ScriptPubKey is a digital signature that represents a user’s public key and allows interaction with smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain.
Why P2PK scripts shouldn’t specify a separate address?
If P2PK scripts didn’t have their own addresses, it would be more convenient for users to manage multiple accounts, each with their own separate wallet. However, this approach has several drawbacks:
- Scalability: – Separate addresses for P2PK scripts mean that each user needs a unique wallet for each transaction they make, which can create scalability issues.
- Security: – Using more addresses makes it harder to manage and secure multiple wallets, as there is a higher risk of someone compromising one wallet to access others.
- User experience.
If P2PK scripts have separate addresses, users will have to remember multiple wallets, which can be inconvenient and time-consuming.
Key characters and script decryptions
To understand why P2PK scripts don’t have their own addresses, let’s look at how initial characters map to script decryptions. In Ethereum, the initial character of an address determines which script it points to.
Here are some examples:
0x: points to the default public key (1)
0x...: points to the specific P2PK script
0x...: points to the specific ScriptPubKey
To decrypt the leading character, you need to know where it points. This is where the wallet logic comes into play.
Wallet Logic and ScriptDecodes
In Ethereum wallets, the ScriptDecoded function takes an address as input and returns the corresponding P2PK script or ScriptPubKey. This is done by parsing the leading characters of the address.
Here is an example:
function getScript(address: string) public view return (byte memory) {
// Get the leading characters
bytes32 leadingChars = keccak256(address);
// Decode leading characters in the decoded script
scriptDecode bytes memory = abi.encodePacked(leadingChars);
return scriptDecode;
}
In this example, the getScript function takes an address as input and returns the corresponding P2PK script or ScriptPubKey.
Conclusion
While it may seem convenient to use separate addresses for P2PK scripts, it is actually a complex problem with several factors influencing its design. By understanding how leading characters map to decoding scripts in Ethereum wallets, we can appreciate the complexity of managing multiple accounts and transactions on the blockchain.