Magic Bytes
The message delimiter on the bitcoin network.
Magic bytes are used as a way to identify the separate messages sent between nodes on the bitcoin network.
For example, if you are trying to connect to a node with your own code, every message you send to that node should begin with f9beb4d9, and every message you receive from that node will start with the same magic bytes too.
The magic bytes.
Magic bytes are 4 bytes in length, and will be different depending on which network you’re on:
| Network | Magic Bytes |
|---|---|
| Mainnet | f9beb4d9 |
| Testnet3 | 0b110907 |
| Regtest | fabfb5da |
Example.
Here’s a version message I received from a node on the Testnet3 network:
0b11090776657273696f6e000000000066000000c0094f817e1101000d000000000000004659775800000000000000000000000000000000000000000000ffff0000000000000d000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000003d2324b2fc764108102f5361746f7368693a302e31332e312fab3d100001
And here’s a tx message:
0b110907747800000000000000000000e1000000db31994501000000018ad494471addef205294beb3b2673e2734a0c558b8dbc1334412e42b4a730b32010000006a473044022060c7048255d32a3c8014775d93e32339ed9f460c1f33770fab14444af2cdfb5f02204bd6020742b5deda36712c55f5110a2f4d9ea6c97e45a90bca39d134932c91b2012103b93183cf139818b023f79d6b9dc0c9b80276df9f188948e587db80c988337ec7ffffffff0280d1f008000000001976a9141f81f255c1df8d1b7665e7e7340b893ede2301a988acb8665b00000000001976a9149d28b845d29c1237e7273df9108f1597d4939e0688ac00000000
Magic bytes are also used to separate block data in the blk*.dat files.
Why use Magic Bytes?
If you connect to a bitcoin node, think of the messages you get from it as a continual stream of data.
f9beb4d9’s help you spot when a new message starts.https://github.com/in3rsha/php-simple-bitcoin-node
If you are trying to read this data, it’s good to have a reliable way of knowing when a new message starts (and ends). This is why a specific set of “magic bytes” are used as a “marker” so that you can always identify the start of a new message.
So there’s nothing actually magical about magic bytes – it’s just a way of segmenting data.
Why these bytes in particular?
These bytes have no specific meaning, except for:
The message start string is designed to be unlikely to occur in normal data. The characters are rarely used upper ASCII, not valid as UTF-8, and produce a large 32-bit integer with any alignment. – chainparams.cpp
So they could be different, but these are just 4 bytes that have the properties that make for good magic bytes on the bitcoin network.