This NIP standardizes bech32-formatted strings that can be used to display keys, ids and other information in clients. These formats are not meant to be used anywhere in the core protocol, they are only meant for displaying to users, copy-pasting, sharing, rendering QR codes and inputting data.
It is recommended that ids and keys are stored in either hex or binary format, since these formats are closer to what must actually be used the core protocol.
To prevent confusion and mixing between private keys, public keys and event ids, which are all 32 byte strings. bech32-(not-m) encoding with different prefixes can be used for each of these entities.
These are the possible bech32 prefixes:
-`npub`: public keys
-`nsec`: private keys
-`note`: note ids
Example: the hex public key `3bf0c63fcb93463407af97a5e5ee64fa883d107ef9e558472c4eb9aaaefa459d` translates to `npub180cvv07tjdrrgpa0j7j7tmnyl2yr6yr7l8j4s3evf6u64th6gkwsyjh6w6`.
## Shareable identifiers with extra metadata
When sharing a profile or an event, an app may decide to include relay information and other metadata such that other apps can locate and display these entities more easily.
For these events, the contents are a binary-encoded list of `TLV` (type-length-value), with `T` and `L` being 1 byte each (`uint8`, i.e. a number in the range of 0-255), and `V` being a sequence of bytes of the size indicated by `L`.
These are the possible bech32 prefixes with `TLV`:
-`npub10elfcs4fr0l0r8af98jlmgdh9c8tcxjvz9qkw038js35mp4dma8qzvjptg` should decode into the public key hex `7e7e9c42a91bfef19fa929e5fda1b72e0ebc1a4c1141673e2794234d86addf4e` and vice-versa
-`nsec1vl029mgpspedva04g90vltkh6fvh240zqtv9k0t9af8935ke9laqsnlfe5` should decode into the private key hex `67dea2ed018072d675f5415ecfaed7d2597555e202d85b3d65ea4e58d2d92ffa` and vice-versa
-`nprofile1qqsrhuxx8l9ex335q7he0f09aej04zpazpl0ne2cgukyawd24mayt8gpp4mhxue69uhhytnc9e3k7mgpz4mhxue69uhkg6nzv9ejuumpv34kytnrdaksjlyr9p` should decode into a profile with the following TLV items: