- From: David Chadwick <D.W.Chadwick@kent.ac.uk>
- Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 07:10:15 +1200
- To: public-credentials@w3.org
On 27/04/2020 06:22, Dmitri Zagidulin wrote: > > IMO, saying it's "multicodec / multibase" is about a billion times > better than saying "its base64 / base58". > > > Absolutely agree there. Multicodec and multibase are, I think, a must, > in terms of clarity, future-proofing, and so on. > > I do want to say something about the merits of base58 for all key > representations and anything DID-related. Also, I agree with your 3 > layer approach. Except that to me, 3rd layer is not optional. > > > Layer 3 represents why i dislike base58... who cares if "I" and "l" > look similar... > > We care. We *all* care, eventually. Because despite all of our best > actions to prevent humans from ever dealing with raw key material or > DIDs (and we *should* do our best to prevent that, it should always be > mediated by convenient software)... there WILL come a point where > you're typing in your key or DID or whatever, from backup. You WILL be > reading that gobbledygook string to your uncle over the phone. Yes, > those cases will be exceedingly rare. But when they do happen, you > will be intensely glad that you can tell a lowercase L from an > uppercase i. But if the key is ephemeral then it wont even be exceedingly rare, it will be never. So we dont need human readability for machine-only used ephemeral keys Kind regards David
Received on Sunday, 26 April 2020 19:10:36 UTC