Also covering Bech32m, BIP173, and Native segwit address

Bech32 is an address format used to pay native segwit outputs.

Using only 32 letters and numbers, the bech32 address format is case insensitive and includes an error-correction code that can catch almost all address typos (and even identify where the typos occur in some cases). Addresses encode a segwit version, making them forward compatible with a large range of conceivable upgrades.

After a problem was discovered with bech32 error detection for future upgrades under some rare circumstances, a new bech32 modified (bech32m) format was proposed. It is expected that bech32m will be used for taproot and future segwit-based script upgrades, requiring wallets and services that implemented support for paying the original bech32 address format to upgrade if they want to support paying taproot address and future upgrades. No upgrade is required to continue paying the original (version 0) segwit addresses for P2WPKH and P2WSH scripts.

Primary code and documentation

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