There are three different types of addresses in the blockchain, each of which is associated with two pairs of cryptographic keys, one for payment and one for participation (staking).
All three types behave identically with regard to payment.
- Base address: The participation (staking) key is directly linked to the
- Pointer address: The address contains a “pointer” to a certificate of the delegation in the block chain (blockchain) that defines the participation key
- Company address: Participation is not possible. This type of address is intended for the exchanges, which must not use the funds entrusted to them for participation in the protocol.
Each wallet consists of two types of addresses:
-Expenditure address: This is the one we usually use for value transfers.
-Staking address: This is where the rewards paid for the protocol are housed. From this address it is not possible to send funds to other accounts, only to the expenses address (claim).
At Daedalus, the rewards are shown in an isolated way and also the ones added to the total of the wallet, and at Yoroi the rewards are shown on the dashboard.
With Shelley a new type of address is introduced again, BECH32. In Shelley all Cardano wallets will have to migrate to BECH32 so that all ADA owners can participate in the proxy and voting test.
The old addresses of Yoroi and Serokell are then rejected. Under the new Shelley account ledger rules, ADA owners will only be able to make transactions to a BECH32 address.
Morphology
Expense address (103 lower case alphanumeric characters):
addr1q9xz02yynlfyuq2n64fvxsxerwu6qhgwkct9yn1rgl9rr6j4kjnefp9t8xdhuskpm2vszvm2y3vk32vq3r6vze3hs9jq07tkmf
Delegating staking address (103 lower case alphanumeric characters):
55b4a79484ab399b7e42c1da9901336a245968a98088f4c166578155
Staking address Bech32: (word stake + 54 lower case alphanumeric characters):
stake1u92mffu5sj4nnxm7gtqa4xgpxd4zgkjg4xqg3axpvcmczeq57gxkz
ADVICE
Whenever you send money from your wallet, check the first 8 and last 8 digits of the destination address, because even if you have copied and pasted the address or picked it up with a QR, there may be a virus on your device that changes the destination address to steal funds.