The Multibase Data Format
draft-multiformats-multibase-03
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Juan Benet
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Manu Sporny
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2021-02-19
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Network Working Group J. Benet
Internet-Draft Protocol Labs
Intended status: Standards Track M. Sporny
Expires: August 23, 2021 Digital Bazaar
February 19, 2021
The Multibase Data Format
draft-multiformats-multibase-03
Abstract
Raw binary data is often encoded using a mechanism that enables the
data to be included in human-readable text-based formats. This
mechanism is often referred to as "base-encoding the data". Base-
encoding is often used when expressing binary data in hyperlinks,
cryptographic keys in web pages, or security tokens in application
software. There are a variety of base-encodings, such as base32,
base58, and base64. It is not always possible to differentiate one
base-encoding from another. The purpose of this specification is to
provide a mechanism to be able to deterministically identify the
base-encoding for a particular string of data.
Feedback
This specification is a joint work product of Protocol Labs [1], the
W3C Digital Verification Community Group [2], and the W3C Credentials
Community Group [3]. Feedback related to this specification should
logged in the issue tracker [4] or be sent to public-
credentials@w3.org [5]. .
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.
Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on August 23, 2021.
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Internet-Draft The Multibase Data Format February 2021
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. The Multibase Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2.1. A Multibase Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2. URIs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Appendix A. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Appendix B. Test Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
B.1. Hexadecimal upper-case encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
B.2. Base-32 upper-case encoding, no padding . . . . . . . . . 4
B.3. Base-58 Bitcoin encoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
B.4. Base-64 with padding and MIME-encoding . . . . . . . . . 4
Appendix C. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Appendix D. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
D.1. The Multibase Algorithms Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1. Introduction
This specification describes a forward-compatible data model for
expressing raw binary data in a variety of base-encoding formats such
as base32, base58. and base64.
When text is encoded as bytes, we can usually use a one-size-fits-all
encoding (UTF-8) because we're always encoding to the same set of 256
bytes. When that doesn't work, usually for historical or performance
reasons, we can usually infer the encoding from the context.
However, when bytes are encoded as text (using a base encoding), the
choice of base encoding is often restricted by the context. Worse,
these restrictions can change based on where the data appears in the
text. In some cases, we can only use [a-z0-9]. In others, we can
use a larger set of characters but need a compact encoding. This has
lead to a large set of "base encodings", one for every use-case.
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