How is a Litecoin address generated?

Question

How is a litecoin address generated? What hashing do they use?

For example, bitcoin addresses are generated like so: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses

I am looking for an answer like that but can't find it anywhere. Any litecoin searches turn up with bitcoin links.

Please do not give me Litecoin address generation sites or wallets to download. I want to know how I can manually program a litecoin address generator.

Answer 1

Litecoin uses exactly the same procedure to generate addresses, the only difference is the network prefix.

On step 4 (Add version byte in front of RIPEMD-160 hash) instead of 0x00 for bitcoin use

0x30 for Litecoin main-net or

0x6F for Litecoin test-net.

Your address should start with L then and will be a valid Litecoin address.

Full sequence:

0 - Having a private ECDSA key

18E14A7B6A307F426A94F8114701E7C8E774E7F9A47E2C2035DB29A206321725

1 - Take the corresponding public key generated with it (65 bytes, 1 byte 0x04, 32 bytes corresponding to X coordinate, 32 bytes corresponding to Y coordinate)

0450863AD64A87AE8A2FE83C1AF1A8403CB53F53E486D8511DAD8A04887E5B23522CD470243453A299FA9E77237716103ABC11A1DF38855ED6F2EE187E9C582BA6

2 - Perform SHA-256 hashing on the public key

600FFE422B4E00731A59557A5CCA46CC183944191006324A447BDB2D98D4B408

3 - Perform RIPEMD-160 hashing on the result of SHA-256

010966776006953D5567439E5E39F86A0D273BEE

4 - Add version byte in front of RIPEMD-160 hash (0x30 for Litecoin Main Network)

30010966776006953D5567439E5E39F86A0D273BEE

(note that below steps are the Base58Check encoding, which has multiple library options available implementing it)

5 - Perform SHA-256 hash on the extended RIPEMD-160 result

27872C1C5DF98F26A09EEBE7A048A52CCFFD647098EACDB6D5D48563B0DBE7B4

6 - Perform SHA-256 hash on the result of the previous SHA-256 hash

713B731B0E30DDD0B6E1F73E2EA2A1E298A35BBDB37FF13C593028515C3B2B50

7 - Take the first 4 bytes of the second SHA-256 hash. This is the address checksum

713B731B

8 - Add the 4 checksum bytes from stage 7 at the end of extended RIPEMD-160 hash from stage 4. This is the 25-byte binary Litecoin Address.

30010966776006953D5567439E5E39F86A0D273BEE713B731B

9 - Convert the result from a byte string into a base58 string using Base58Check encoding. This is the most commonly used Litecoin Address format

LKKSCYdyWP7fJDMZ1KUDbpj3yPmQ22MQrv

Answer 2

$ python3.6 ltc_address_generator.py 0450863AD64A87AE8A2FE83C1AF1A8403CB53F53E486D8511DAD8A04887E5B23522CD470243453A299FA9E77237716103ABC11A1DF38855ED6F2EE187E9C582BA6
LKKSCYdyWP7fJDMZ1KUDbpj3yPmQ22MQrv

---

Please try the following py script, and generate a ltc address for your public key.

#!/usr/bin/env python3
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

import hashlib
import base58


def sha256(hexstr):
    """sha256 hash algorithm
    """
    return hashlib.new('sha256', bytes.fromhex(hexstr)).hexdigest()


def rip160(hexstr):
    """ripemd160 hash algorithm
    """
    return hashlib.new('ripemd160', bytes.fromhex(hexstr)).hexdigest()


def get_ltc_address(pubkey):
    """https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/65282/how-is-a-litecoin-address-generated
    """
    rip160_hash = "30" + rip160(sha256(pubkey.upper()).upper()).upper()
    sha256_hash = sha256(sha256(rip160_hash).upper()).upper()
    return base58.b58encode(bytes.fromhex(rip160_hash + sha256_hash[0:8]))


if __name__ == '__main__':
    import sys

    if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        print("[*] Usage: python %s publickey")
        sys.exit(1)

    print(get_ltc_address(sys.argv[1]))

# references
# https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Protocol_documentation#Addresses
# https://gist.githubusercontent.com/circulosmeos/97f2c155777434081cb56886c1b608be/raw/f960b4e89e86dcdf77fb6288c1005a7cb847cc98/easy-litecoin-address-from-public-key.py
# https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/65282/how-is-a-litecoin-address-generated
# https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/56923/is-this-how-to-generate-a-bitcoin-address-with-python
# https://iancoleman.io/bip39/