ciphers/base58.py is a copy of base64_cipher.py — no Base58 implementation exists in the file #15637

Repository commit

master @ 6e03a48 (base58.py last touched by 3e48459)

Python version (python --version)

Python 3.13.5

Dependencies version (pip freeze)

n/a — no dependencies needed; verified by reading the file on master and diffing against ciphers/base64_cipher.py

Expected behavior

ciphers/base58.py should implement Base58 encoding/decoding — the Bitcoin-style alphabet 123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz (no 0, O, I, l), used for e.g. addresses and WIF keys.

base58_encode(b"\x00\x01") should produce "112" (leading zero bytes become leading 1s), and base58_decode("2z") should produce b"\x00\x01".

Actual behavior

ciphers/base58.py contains no Base58 code at all. It is a byte-identical copy of ciphers/base64_cipher.py:

$ diff base58.py base64_cipher.py
(no output — files are identical)

Both files start with

B64_CHARSET = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/"  # the base64 alphabet

and define the same base64_encode() / base64_decode() functions, with the same doctests comparing against base64.b64encode. A Base58 implementation landed as PR #12123 ("Added Base58 encoding/decoding in ciphers", merged 2026-09-20), but what was merged is the base64 module again, so the repository now has two identical copies of base64 and zero base58.

Concretely, anyone importing the module expecting base58 gets base64 behavior silently:

>>> from ciphers.base58 import base64_encode
>>> base64_encode(b"Hello")  # named/behaves as base64, no base58 API exists
b'SGVsbG8='

and searching the repo for the Base58 alphabet finds nothing:

$ grep -rn "123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ" .   # canonical Base58 alphabet
(no matches)

The fix is to either replace base58.py with a real Base58 implementation (big-int divmod encode/decode with leading-1-per-leading-zero-byte handling and the 58-char alphabet), or delete the file if Base58 is out of scope — keeping a duplicate base64 module under a base58 name just misleads users.