Types of addresses in the crypto world

An address is a very important aspect of cryptocurrency and in my today's post, I want to explain the types of addresses we have. But before we go ahead, it is important to at least know what an address is.

In a layman's understanding, you will agree with me that an address is a place where someone lives or stay or where someone is going. So an address gives a detailed description of where the person stays or where the person going to.

In the crypto world, we say an address is a string of characters that holds a particular currency. This means that an address is a place where a particular digital character is stored or held. There are two types of addresses in the crypto world and they include the wallet address and the contract address. I will explain them in detail below.

• Contract Address

The first type of address anyone should know about is the contract address. This is called the parent address of the token. Every cryptocurrency has a contract address and this serves as a home for the crypto under consideration.

This means that if a crypto is created, it is initially stored in the contract address before it can be moved to another address which is the wallet address that I will be explaining after this.

So a contract address is like the family where the token originated from. That is the first home of the crypto before it is now distributed or people buy it out and then put them in the personal wallet address.

The contract address is the same everywhere for a currency or token. If for instance there is an airdrop, the contract address I will use when collecting mine will be the same as yours at any point and time.

• Wallet Address

A wallet address is the address of a particular token. We have different crypto assets with different exchanges and these exchanges provide us with a wallet address of a particular crypto asset anytime we want to receive, send or hold a token, we use it for that purpose.

Wallet addresses are unique and everyone has his or her address. Unlike the contract address which is one for a particular asset, the wallet address differs for Mr. A and Mr. B respectively.

For example, the steem wallet address, we all may be sent to the same exchange like Binance, Roqqu, or any of the exchanges but our memo is what defines the wallet address and that is what brings the currency to our domain.