Bech32
ProtocolThis term is part of the Bitcoin glossary — See all terms
Bech32 is the encoding used by SegWit and Taproot addresses starting with "bc1": all lowercase, free of confusing characters, with an error-detecting checksum.
Old Bitcoin addresses were a jumble of mixed-case letters and digits. That meant typos went unnoticed until the funds failed to arrive, and uppercase/lowercase mistakes changed the meaning entirely. Bech32, specified in BIP 173, reinvented address encoding: everything is lowercase, and the alphabet drops 1, I, l, O and 0 — the characters people mix up most.
At the end of every bech32 string sits a four-character checksum. Feed the address a wrong character and the checksum fails instantly, so most fat-finger mistakes are caught before you send. It also allows addresses longer than the old 25-character standard and a human-friendly separator: the data after bc1 can be shown in groups of four, so reading an address aloud becomes possible without losing your place. Both SegWit (bc1q) and Taproot (bc1p) addresses use it, and you can copy them straight from this block explorer.
