<p>All of the data structures in Bitcoin use a custom Bitcoin specific serialization format. The standard that is followed is the Bitcoin defined standard, not any other standard. A description of the non-segwit format can be found <a href="https://btcinformation.org/en/developer-reference#raw-transaction-format" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>. For segwit transactions, the format is described in <a href="https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0144.mediawiki" rel="nofollow noreferrer">BIP 144</a>.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-09-16T00:09:52.500Z
2018-09-16T00:09:52.500Z
Ava Chow
<p>I'm not very familiar with low-level structures, so I would like to know if bitcoin protocol follows a standard on how a bitcoin transaction data is serialized and sent over TCP.</p>

<p>Does it use any of these serialization format?
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_data_serialization_formats" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_data_serialization_formats</a></p>

<transactions>
Which serialization format the transactions use?
John Smith
# Which serialization format the transactions use?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-09-15)

I'm not very familiar with low-level structures, so I would like to know if bitcoin protocol follows a standard on how a bitcoin transaction data is serialized and sent over TCP.

Does it use any of these serialization format?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_data_serialization_formats>

**Tags:** transactions


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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-09-16. Score: 2 | Accepted answer

All of the data structures in Bitcoin use a custom Bitcoin specific serialization format. The standard that is followed is the Bitcoin defined standard, not any other standard. A description of the non-segwit format can be found [here](https://btcinformation.org/en/developer-reference#raw-transaction-format). For segwit transactions, the format is described in [BIP 144](https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0144.mediawiki).


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