Quote from: DannyHamilton on April 29, 2015, 08:33:55 PM

Quote from: tspacepilot on April 29, 2015, 08:02:05 PM

I admit that I'm often mistaken, but aren't those "inputs" and "outputs" public keys corresponding to private keys that can be used to sign transactions? And there's a 1-1 mapping between keys and addresses (right?). So, in some sense, aren't those inputs and outputs in correspondence with addresses?

No.

The outputs contain a script, and these scripts in this transaction do contain a hash of a public key, but an output isn't required to have a hash of a public key, or it could contain the hash of multiple private keys. Even if it does contain the hash of a public key, it may not be a P2PKH script or a P2SH script, in which case there is no valid address that the output script could be represented as.

Thanks for the education! So, is it fair to say that an output is always always associated with 1 or more addresses (either through a hash of a public key, or a hash of multiple private keys)? I have to admit, I don't fully understand the case where there's "no valid address that the output script could be represented as" except under the case where this is true because of a payment to a multisignature conjunction of addresses. Please forgive my ignorance.

Quote

The inputs contain the necessary data to satisfy the script in the previously unspent output that is being spent. In the transaction presented, the script that is being satisfied did require a public key, so the input does contain a public key, but other scripts in other transactions may require multiple public keys, or no public keys at all.

Again, can you help me understand the "none at all" case?