What does this Pubkey mean?

Question

I just started learning about Bitcoin, and am sorta familiar with p2pk and p2pkh. I just found this input on a Bitcoin blockchain explorer:

It looks like the Pkscript can be "solved" (I'm not super familiar with terminology) by something thats hash160 is the 0b49fe...

The ScriptSig looks a little more intimidating :)

What exactly is the ScriptSig doing? How does this sort of paying mechanism work?

Thanks

Answer 1

This is a P2SH script (pay to script hash), defined in BIP 16.

The scriptPubKey itself is very uninteresting: it takes an element from the scriptSig, hashes it with OP_HASH160, and then compares it with 0b49fe...f1. In other words, ostensibly the only thing needed in order to spend is knowing some piece of data whose hash is 0b49fe....f1.

Now, BIP 16 changed this. If a scriptPubKey has exactly the form OP_HASH160 + 20 byte hash + OP_EQUAL, then the special P2SH validation rules trigger:

• All operations in the scriptSig must be pushes.
• The final push in the scriptSig (the one whose hash we know is 0b49fe...f1) is taken to again be a Script (called the redeemScript).
• That Script is executed, with as inputs all but the final push in the scriptSig.

So, semantically, the whole operation is equivalent to just using the redeemScript as scriptPubKey, but without needing to reveal this to the sender. Instead, the sender can just be given a short P2SH (3...) address that encodes the hash of the redeemScript, and the real one is only revealed at spending time.

In your example, the redeemScript appears to encode a 2-of-3 multisig policy: OP_2 <pubkey1> <pubkey2> <pubkey3> OP_3 OP_CHECKMULTISIG, and the additional stack items in the scriptSig are OP_0 (a workaround for a bug that OP_CHECKMULTISIG pops off one item too many from the stack) plus 2 signatures.