Standard Script Types

While Bitcoin Script is flexible, most nodes will only relay "Standard" transactions. There are five main types of ScriptPubKey patterns used today.

1. P2PKH (Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash)

The most common legacy format (Addresses starting with 1).

• Pattern: OP_DUP OP_HASH160 <PubkeyHash> OP_EQUALVERIFY OP_CHECKSIG

• Logic: It hashes the provided public key and checks if it matches the hash in the lock, then verifies the signature.

2. P2SH (Pay-to-Script-Hash)

Used for Multi-sig and SegWit (Addresses starting with 3).

• Pattern: OP_HASH160 <ScriptHash> OP_EQUAL

• Logic: Instead of locking to a public key, it locks to the hash of a different script. The spender must provide that original script to unlock it.

3. P2WPKH (Pay-to-Witness-Public-Key-Hash)

Native SegWit (Addresses starting with bc1q).

• Pattern: 0 <PubkeyHash>

• Logic: A very short script. The 0 is the "Witness Version," and the hash follows it. This signals nodes to look in the Witness Field for the key.

4. P2TR (Pay-to-Taproot)

The latest upgrade (Addresses starting with bc1p).

• Pattern: 1 <32-byte Schnorr Pubkey>

• Logic: Uses Schnorr signatures and Merkleized Abstract Syntax Trees (MAST) to hide complex scripts as simple keys.

Summary Table

Type	Script Pattern (Simplified)	Address Prefix
P2PKH	76a914...88ac	1
P2SH	a914...87	3
P2WPKH	0014...	bc1q
P2TR	5120...	bc1p

In the next section, we will discuss the special OP_RETURN script used for data.