How INTcoin addresses work

INTcoin addresses use Bech32 encoding with network-specific prefixes. If you’ve used Bitcoin’s native SegWit addresses (bc1q...), the format will look familiar.

Address Prefixes

Network Prefix Example
Mainnet int1q int1qzmap7huv3kznxzxukj3kssx3nygg58ca...
Testnet tint1q tint1qzmap7huv3kznxzxukj3kssx3nygg58cac...
Signet sint1q sint1qha47guyc6ntme998jjfzykft96kkzgme...

The prefix tells you which network the address belongs to. Mainnet wallets will refuse to send to testnet addresses and vice versa.

How Addresses Are Derived

  1. Your wallet generates a Dilithium5 keypair (public key: 2,592 bytes, secret key: 4,896 bytes)
  2. The public key is hashed with SHA3-256 to produce a 32-byte hash
  3. The hash is truncated to 20 bytes (160 bits)
  4. The 20-byte hash is Bech32-encoded with the network prefix

The result is a human-readable address that encodes the hash of your public key. When you receive a payment, the sender locks the coins to this hash. To spend them, you must provide the full public key and a valid Dilithium5 signature.

HD Wallet and Seed Phrases

INTcoin uses hierarchical deterministic (HD) key derivation. A single 24-word mnemonic seed phrase generates all your addresses:

  • Derivation path: m/44'/2210'/account'/change/index
  • Coin type 2210 is unique to INTcoin
  • Key derivation uses SHA3-256 (not the secp256k1-based BIP32 used by Bitcoin)

Your seed phrase is the master backup. From it, every address your wallet has ever generated can be recovered.

Extended Keys

For advanced use (multisig coordination, watch-only wallets):

  • ixpub — Extended public key (~3,600 Bech32 characters)
  • ixprv — Extended private key (~10,300 Bech32 characters)

These are the INTcoin equivalents of Bitcoin’s xpub/xprv. They’re larger because Dilithium5 keys are larger.

Important: Dilithium5 does not support child public key derivation. You cannot derive child keys from an ixpub alone — this is a fundamental property of lattice-based signatures, not a limitation of the implementation.

Address Reuse

Like Bitcoin, address reuse is discouraged. Each time you share an address and receive a payment, the corresponding public key becomes associated with that address on the blockchain. Using fresh addresses improves your privacy by making it harder to link transactions to the same wallet.

The wallet automatically generates new addresses for receiving and for change outputs.