P2SH

Pay to script hash (P2SH) was deprecated as part of the BitcoinSV Genesis upgrade in February 2020.

History of P2SH

P2SH transactions were designed to allow funds to be locked with a script hash. To spend bitcoins locked in a P2SH output, the recipient needed to possess a script matching the script hash and a corresponding set of data which could solve the puzzle. It was introduced as BIP-0016.

P2SH was created after limits and transaction standardisation requirements were introduced that limited the scope of Bitcoin transactions that could be propagated over the BTC networks to a specific set of templated designs.

P2SH enabled users to create a customised Bitcoin script and hash it into an ~34-character P2SH address. These were most commonly used to manage multisignature wallets that required more than 2 of 3 signature rights as was limited by the isStandard transaction test. Bitcoin P2SH addresses always started with 3.

Spending P2SH outputs

P2SH outputs remain spendable under network rules however any transactions generated post Genesis using a P2SH output script will not have their full script evaluated during the spend check.