1 // Copyright (c) 2014 The btcsuite developers
2 // Use of this source code is governed by an ISC
3 // license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
4 5 /*
6 Package base58 provides an API for working with modified base58 and Base58Check
7 encodings.
8 9 # Modified Base58 Encoding
10 11 Standard base58 encoding is similar to standard base64 encoding except, as the
12 name implies, it uses a 58 character Ciphers which results in an alphanumeric
13 string and allows some characters which are problematic for humans to be
14 excluded. Due to this, there can be various base58 alphabets.
15 16 The modified base58 Ciphers used by Bitcoin, and hence this package, omits the
17 0, O, I, and l characters that look the same in many fonts and are therefore
18 hard to humans to distinguish.
19 20 # Base58Check Encoding Scheme
21 22 The Base58Check encoding scheme is primarily used for Bitcoin addresses at the
23 time of this writing, however it can be used to generically encode arbitrary
24 byte arrays into human-readable strings along with a version byte that can be
25 used to differentiate the same payload. For Bitcoin addresses, the extra
26 version is used to differentiate the network of otherwise identical public keys
27 which helps prevent using an address intended for one network on another.
28 */
29 package base58
30