Why are there so many different address formats in Bitcoin?

Why not just use one kind of address type, like legacy p2pkh?

This is because different address types serve different purposes that cannot be achieved with P2PKH.

For example, multisig addresses may provide stronger security against certain types of threats, or some schemes may involve multiple parties.

Improved types such as P2SH and P2WSH provide better privacy protection and provide Bitcoin network expansion to provide more transaction capacity. This cannot be achieved using P2PKH.

If you only use the original Bitcoin address format, that is. Legacy p2pkh. Is it possible to implement the functionality in a different format?

Because we use the word “address”, people sometimes misunderstand the nature and purpose of Bitcoin addresses. It is not a designator of the recipient.

The address is recipe For certain types of locking scripts Perfect Recipe Contains every Information required by the payer to configure a locking script to pay the recipient using the script type specified by the recipient. In ~ address.

If an address can be used with multiple different locking scripts, in addition to the address, the recipient must provide a list of script types accepted for themselves and their wallet software. The address was to carry out this entire task.

This is why many people think “Bitcoin Invoice Reference” would have been a better name than “Bitcoin Address”.

Remember: Bitcoin addresses do not exist in the Bitcoin network protocol and are not used on the Bitcoin network. Therefore, the address does not appear on the Bitcoin blockchain.

A Bitcoin address is convenient, but not required. The Bitcoin network would work perfectly fine if no one used addresses and used some other method of passing the desired locking script in a QR barcode or something like that.

The reason I point this out is not because I want to get rid of addresses, but because I think it would be better for people to shed the extraneous semantic baggage associated with the word address in everyday, non-Bitcoin use.