For example bc1qeklep85ntjz4605drds6aww9u0qr46qzrv5xswd35uhjuj8ahfcqgf6hak in 461e8a4aa0a0e75c06602c505bd7aa06e7116ba5cd98fd6e046e8cbeb00379d6 is 62 bytes ! This is very very long. This will create lot of usability problems in

- Blockexplorers (atleast user should be visually able to compare in a transaction having multiple outputs which one his address)

- Mobiles

- Payment terminals

From my limited understanding, the purpose of inventing a bitcoin address format is for usability and ease of identification (versus a ECDSA public key), While I get the error/checksum capabilities Bech32 brings, any user would prefer a 20 byte address with a checksum over an address that would wrap several lines !!

On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 6:19 PM, Ben Thompson <thompson.benedictjames@gmail.com> wrote:

Checking the first few bytes of a Bitcoin Address should not be considered sufficient for ensuring that it is correct as it takes less than a second to generate a 3 character vanity address that matches the first 3 characters of an address.

On Mon, 30 Oct 2017, 11:44 shiva sitamraju via bitcoin-dev, <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
Hi,

When I copy and paste bitcoin address, I double check the first few bytes, to make sure I copied the correct one. This is to make sure some rogue software is not changing the address, or I incorrectly pasted the wrong address.

With Bech32 address, its seems like in this department we are taking as step in the backward direction. With the traditional address, I could compare first few bytes like 1Ko or 1L3. With bech32, bc1. is all I can see and compare which is likely to be same anyway. Note that most users will only compare the first few bytes only (since addresses themselves are very long and will overflow in a mobile text box).

Is there anyway to make the Bech32 addresses format more visually distinct (atleast the first few bytes) ?
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