How can I get the destination address from raw transaction data?

Question

I am writing a program that reads Bitcoin transactions from .blk files and performs some analysis on them. I would like to get the transaction destination addresses (like in some transaction explorers: link.

Raw transaction data looks like this and I don't see any address fields anywhere.

How is it possible to calculate it? Is there a (preferably C/C++) program that already does that? Or are there any details on how to implement this?

Best regards and thanks for all answers in advance! :)

Answer 1

Raw transaction data looks like this and I don't see any address fields anywhere.

That's because transactions don't directly involve addresses. An address is an abstraction of a Bitcoin-script used in a transaction. An address is a way for a payee to externally communicate to a payer enough information for the payer to construct an output entry for a new transaction.

are there any details on how to implement this?

See for example https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/p2pkh

So for a pay-to-public-key-hash (P2PKH) address you:

• Calculate a Hash160 (SHA256 + RIPEMD160) of the public key
• Prefix that hash with 0x00
• Suffix with a checksum (first four bytes of a SHA256 hash of other data)
• Encode in Base58

You'd need to separately handle address formation for every standard type of Bitcoin-script. Some don't have a standard way to derive an address.