- From: Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
- Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2020 10:50:02 -0400
- To: public-credentials@w3.org
On 4/24/20 3:59 PM, Orie Steele wrote: > If you want to never be misinterpreted, never use the term "base58" > without saying "with the bitcoin alphabet" :) ... but it's likely that > when you hear base58, you can assume "with the bitcoin alphabet". I agree with much that has been said about base64* in this thread... it's a mess (a useful mess, but still, a mess). I was just battling a "secretly not base64, secretly not even unpadded base64, really base64url, even though the docs say its base64" bug in some code on Friday... and that bug only appeared after running several hundred variations of input data into the algorithm I was writing. Note that in: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-msporny-base58-01 There is only one alphabet. That is, while the Ripple and Flickr alphabets are acknowledged, they are relegated to just Ripple and Flickr applications because we don't want to fall into the same trap that base64 did. The spec above asserts: There is only one globally interoperable alphabet for base58, all implementations should use that one. I realize that this is going to cause heartburn in the various Ripple and Flickr communities, but saying "You can choose among N alphabets" harms standardization, especially in this space. The Bitcoin alphabet is the one with the most wide spread usage... that's the one we standardize on and move forward. As a standards community, we need to drive this point home with implementers if we want something that's going to not result in fragmentation, like base64 did. -- manu -- Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/ Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc. blog: Veres One Decentralized Identifier Blockchain Launches https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches
Received on Sunday, 26 April 2020 14:50:16 UTC