Checksum
technology · wallet
Data derived from a message to detect accidental corruption or transcription errors.
A checksum is computed from other data and checked again after storage, transfer, or entry. Address formats such as Base58Check, Bech32, and CashAddr use checksums so wallet software can reject many malformed strings.
A checksum is not a digital signature and does not authenticate the sender, owner, or intended recipient. Its strength and error-detection guarantees depend on the algorithm and format; a valid checksum only shows that the string is internally well formed.
Related terms
Address
→A network-specific identifier that describes a destination or spending condition for a cryptocurrency payment.
wallet · technical
Bech32
→A checksummed, human-readable encoding used for native SegWit addresses and other data.
technology · wallet
CashAddr
→A Bitcoin Cash address format with a network prefix, Base32 payload, type information, and error-detecting checksum.
wallet · bitcoin-cash · standard