Base58 PHP extension

PHP extension for base58 encoding and decoding using the Bitcoin alphabet.

Using this extension is about 100 times faster than using userspace functions.

Requirements

• PHP 7.x or 8.x

Installation

The extension is available from pecl.

pecl install base58-beta

Manual build

Instead of installing this extension from pecl, you can build it manually

phpize
./configure --with-base58
make
make install

Add the following line to your php.ini

extension=base58.so

Functions

base58_encode

Base58 encode a string.

string base58_encode(string $data)

Triggers an E_WARNING and returns false if string can't be encoded.

base58_encode

Decode a base58 encoded string.

string base58_decode(string $data)

Triggers an E_WARNING and returns false if string can't be decoded.

Caveat

To encode a hash, make sure you're using the raw hash and not a hexidecimal string.

$rawHash = hash('sha256', 'some string', true); // The `true` makes the function return a raw hash
$encodedHash = base58_encode($rawHash);

Benchmark

The extension is run in test Base58ExtEvent. The Base58BCMathEvent and Base58GMPEvent tests use the StephenHill\Base58 PHP library.

StephenHill\Benchmarks\Base16Event
    Method Name    Iterations    Average Time      Ops/second
    ------------  ------------  --------------    -------------
    encodeBase16: [10,000    ] [0.0000001919985] [5,208,374.51881]
    decodeBase16: [10,000    ] [0.0000004031897] [2,480,222.34049]


StephenHill\Benchmarks\Base58BCMathEvent
    Method Name    Iterations    Average Time      Ops/second
    ------------  ------------  --------------    -------------
    encodeBase58: [10,000    ] [0.0000484058857] [20,658.64482]
    decodeBase58: [10,000    ] [0.0000523419857] [19,105.12157]


StephenHill\Benchmarks\Base58ExtEvent
    Method Name    Iterations    Average Time      Ops/second
    ------------  ------------  --------------    -------------
    encodeBase58: [10,000    ] [0.0000003235340] [3,090,865.14370]
    decodeBase58: [10,000    ] [0.0000003539085] [2,825,588.79008]


StephenHill\Benchmarks\Base58GMPEvent
    Method Name    Iterations    Average Time      Ops/second
    ------------  ------------  --------------    -------------
    encodeBase58: [10,000    ] [0.0000255326509] [39,165.53757]
    decodeBase58: [10,000    ] [0.0000418104410] [23,917.47075]


StephenHill\Benchmarks\Base64Event
    Method Name    Iterations    Average Time      Ops/second
    ------------  ------------  --------------    -------------
    encodeBase64: [10,000    ] [0.0000003066778] [3,260,750.99122]
    decodeBase64: [10,000    ] [0.0000003187656] [3,137,100.97233]