NetCid 1.3.0

NetCid

NetCid is a C# (net10.0) implementation of the multiformats CID specification.

Features

• CIDv0 and CIDv1 parsing, encoding, and round-tripping
• CID conversion (ToV0, ToV1)
• Binary CID decode/encode
• Unsigned varint codec (multiformats-compatible, max 9-byte encoding)
• Multihash model + SHA-256 / SHA-512 hash helpers
• Multihash.Encode / Decode for spec-compliant multihash wire format (varint(code) || varint(digestLength) || digest)
• Multibase support for:
  • base58btc (z)
  • base32 lower/upper (b / B)
  • base36 lower/upper (k / K)
  • base64url (u)
• Multicodec constants for common CID codecs (raw, dag-pb, dag-cbor, etc.)
• Multicodec key-type constants (ed25519-pub, p256-pub, secp256k1-pub, etc.)
• Multicodec prefix/decode API for varint-tagged byte buffers

Install

dotnet add package NetCid

Quick Start

using NetCid;
using System.Text;

// Parse existing CIDs
var v0 = Cid.Parse("QmdfTbBqBPQ7VNxZEYEj14VmRuZBkqFbiwReogJgS1zR1n");
var v1 = Cid.Parse("bafkreidon73zkcrwdb5iafqtijxildoonbwnpv7dyd6ef3qdgads2jc4su");

// Convert versions
var v0AsV1 = v0.ToV1();
var v1AsV0 = v0AsV1.ToV0();

// Build from content bytes
var content = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("hello world");
var cid = Cid.FromContent(content, codec: Multicodec.Raw, hashCode: MultihashCode.Sha2_256);

// Serialize
string text = cid.ToString(); // CIDv1 defaults to base32 lower
byte[] bytes = cid.ToByteArray();

Specification Notes

Implementation follows the CID spec behavior, including:

• CIDv0 is always dag-pb + sha2-256(32)
• CIDv1 binary layout: <cidv1-varint><codec-varint><multihash>
• CIDv0 string form has no multibase prefix
• CID versions 2 and 3 are treated as reserved/invalid

Input Limits

Parsing APIs enforce default size limits to reduce memory-pressure risk from untrusted input:

• Cid.DefaultMaxInputStringLength
• Cid.DefaultMaxInputByteLength
• Multibase.DefaultMaxInputLength

Overloads on parse/decode methods let callers provide custom limits when needed.

References:

• https://github.com/multiformats/cid
• https://multiformats.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api/multiformats.cid.html

Development

dotnet restore NetCid.sln
dotnet build NetCid.sln -c Release
dotnet test NetCid.Tests/NetCid.Tests.csproj -c Release
dotnet test NetCid.IntegrationTests/NetCid.IntegrationTests.csproj -c Release

Examples

Reference examples are available under examples/ and mirror the js-multiformats example set:

• examples/cid-interface
• examples/multicodec-interface
• examples/multihash-interface
• examples/block-interface
• examples/multibase-interface
• examples/did-key-interface

See examples/README.md for run commands.

Contributing

See contributors.md for contributor workflow, quality checklist, and PR expectations.

CI / Release

• CI workflow: .github/workflows/ci.yml
• Security workflows: .github/workflows/security.yml, .github/workflows/codeql.yml
• NuGet publish workflow: .github/workflows/release.yml

release.yml pushes packages when a tag like v1.2.3 is pushed (or manual dispatch) and requires NUGET_API_KEY repository secret.

Security

• Responsible disclosure: see SECURITY.md
• Security review and findings: see SECURITY_AUDIT.md