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Base58 Encode/Decode

Convert text to and from Base58 encoding. Base58 is commonly used in cryptocurrency addresses to avoid ambiguous characters.

Examples

About Base58 Encoding

Base58 is a binary-to-text encoding scheme that uses a 58-character alphabet. It's designed to avoid ambiguous characters that could be confused when written down or displayed in certain fonts.

Key Features:

  • • Removes ambiguous characters: 0 (zero), O (capital o), I (capital i), and l (lowercase L)
  • • Also excludes non-alphanumeric characters: + (plus) and / (slash)
  • • Uses alphabet: 123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz
  • • More compact than hexadecimal (base16) but less compact than base64
  • • Human-friendly: easier to type and less prone to errors

Common Uses:

  • • Bitcoin and cryptocurrency addresses
  • • IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) content identifiers
  • • Short URL services
  • • Flickr short URLs
  • • Any application requiring human-readable identifiers

Base58 vs Base64:

  • • Base58 is ~8% less efficient than Base64 in terms of space
  • • Base58 is more human-friendly and less error-prone
  • • Base64 includes characters that can break in URLs (+, /)
  • • Base58 is safer for use in URLs and filenames