base58encoded

Base58 is a family of base-encoding schemes that use a subset of the ASCII character set. Base58 is most notably used in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin for encoding wallet addresses and other identifiers. The "58" refers to the number of characters in the alphabet used for encoding.

The specific alphabet for Base58 is chosen to avoid characters that are easily confused, such as '0' (zero), 'O' (uppercase o), 'I' (uppercase i), and 'l' (lowercase L). It also excludes the plus sign '+' and forward slash '/'. This makes it more human-readable and less error-prone when manually transcribing data. The standard Base58 alphabet consists of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and digits, excluding the aforementioned characters.

The encoding process involves converting a binary number into a string representation using the Base58 alphabet. This is analogous to how Base64 encodes binary data into ASCII characters, but with a reduced character set. When decoding, the Base58 string is converted back into its original binary form.

The primary benefit of using Base58 over Base64 in certain applications is its increased readability and reduced ambiguity for humans. This is particularly useful in contexts where data might be written down or communicated verbally. Cryptocurrencies leverage this for generating shorter, more manageable, and less error-prone public addresses. Another variant, Base58Check, adds a checksum to the encoded data, further enhancing its robustness against typos and transmission errors.