Pushdata Opcodes
Revision as of 00:52, 13 January 2020 by Joshua Henslee (talk | contribs)
The pushdata opcodes push the next bytes of data onto the stack. Opcodes 1-75 simply push the next bytes of data onto the stack without a requirement to specify how many bytes to push.
OP_PUSHDATA1
OP_PUSHDATA1 is used to push data of a length from 75 to 255 bytes onto the stack.
OP_PUSHDATA2
OP_PUSHDATA2 is used to push data of length from 256 bytes up to 64 KB onto the stack.
OP_PUSHDATA4
OP_PUSHDATA2 is used to push data of length from 64,001 bytes up to 4.3 GB onto the stack.
Pushdata opcodes unused
Due to the maximum script size being limited to 520 bytes, these opcodes were essentially rendered useless. The Genesis upgrade increases the maximum script size such that these opcodes can be useful again in script.