Glossary · Wallets

Address.

The destination encoded into a UTxO. May be a public-key address or a script address.

Think of it as

Your house number on Cardano. UTxOs are deliveries waiting at the door until you spend them.

In depth

A Cardano address combines a payment credential (a BLAKE2b-224 hash of either a public key or a script) with an optional staking credential (also a key hash or script hash). UTxOs sitting at a script address can only be spent if the script (validator) permits.

Example

A typical mainnet address starts with "addr1…" and embeds the hash of your spending key plus the hash of your staking key, never the keys themselves.

Next on this path

  1. Public key The verifier counterpart of a private key. Anyone may know it.
  2. Script address An address whose payment credential is a script hash. UTxOs here can only be spent if the script approves.
  3. Staking key The key in your wallet that controls delegation and reward withdrawal.