README

Description

Phactor is a high-performance PHP implementation of the elliptic curve math functions required to generate private/public EC keypairs and ECDSA signatures based on secp256k1 curve parameters. This library also includes a class to generate Service Identification Numbers (SINs) based on the published Identity Protocol v1 spec.

These PHP classes are designed to be used in conjunction with software used for Bitcoin-related cryptographic operations right now but the ultimate, long-range goal is to become a more general-purpose mathematics library that can also be used for scientific computing and other non-ecc cryptography projects - basically anywhere you need a convenient interface to arbitrary precision math functions implemented in PHP.

Note: These classes require either the BC or GMP math PHP extension (GMP is preferred but will use BC as the fallback). You can read more about the GMP extention here: http://www.php.net/manual/en/book.gmp.php

Installation

Installation of this project is very easy using composer:

php composer.phar require ionux/phactor:1.0.8

If you have git installed, you can clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/ionux/phactor.git

Or you can install manually by downloading a zip file from the Releases page and extracting the contents into your project's source directory.

Note: Phactor is under active development so you should always download the project from the Releases page. Those packages are the only packages you should rely upon in a production environment since the bleeding edge source changes could contain regressions.

Usage

Integrating these classes with your project is very simple. For example, after including the necessary Phactor class files (or using an autoloader), to generate keypairs:

$key = new \Phactor\Key;

$info = $key->GenerateKeypair();

An associative array will be returned upon success:

Array
(
  [private_key_hex] => 7a4fbece43963538cb8f9149b094906168d71be36cfb405e6930fddb42da2c7d
  [private_key_dec] => 55323065337948610870652254548527896513063178460294714145329611159...
  [public_key] => 043fbbf44c3da3fec12bf7bac254fd176adc3eaed79470932b574d8d60728eb206fb7a...
  [public_key_compressed] => 033fbbf44c3da3fec12bf7bac254fd176adc3eaed79470932b574d8d607...
  [public_key_x] => 3fbbf44c3da3fec12bf7bac254fd176adc3eaed79470932b574d8d60728eb206
  [public_key_y] => fb7ac7ac6959f75a6859a1a8d745db7e825a3c5c826e5b2e4950892b35772313
)

Depending on the speed of your hardware, keys can be generated in approximately 10ms or less using GMP.

To generate ECDSA signatures:

$sig = new \Phactor\Signature;

$signature = $sig->generate('my message to sign...', $info['private_key_hex']);

Which will return the signature encoded in the ASN.1 DER format:

30440220421cfa96cb4f735cc768e8e2acd6bdf87c9b731ded3184f05a146ba0709cf24802204a21831926b14...

To verify an existing signature, call the Verify() function which returns a boolean true/false:

$sig = new \Phactor\Signature;

if ($sig->Verify($signature, $message, $publickey) == false) {
  // The signature is invalid - reject!
} else {
  // The signature is valid.
}

Signatures and keys have been tested against OpenSSL and are interoperable. In fact, any other project that can import/export correct EC keypairs and ECDSA signatures will be compatible with this library.

Note: All points and signatures are verified to be mathematically correct before they're returned to the caller. An \Exception is thrown if a point or signature does not pass the verification methods.

The class to generate Service Identification Numbers (SINs) works in a similar fashion. Pass the compressed public key in hex form, for example:

$sin = new \Phactor\Sin;

print_r($sin->Generate($info['public_key_compressed']));

Which will return a single, BASE-58 encoded value beginning with the letter 'T' (specific value to SINs). For example:

Tf61EPoJDSjbp6tGoyjbTKq7XLABPVcyUwY

Note: When using this class to generate SINs for use in a Bitcoin-related project, the usage of uncompressed public keys is deprecated. Use only the compressed public key when generating a SIN for this purpose to remain compatible with the Bitcoin network.

Found a bug?

Let me know! Send a pull request or a patch. Questions? Ask! I will respond to all filed issues.

Support:

• GitHub Issues
  • Open an issue if you are having issues with this library

Contribute

Would you like to help with this project? Great! You don't have to be a developer, either. If you've found a bug or have an idea for an improvement, please open an issue and tell me about it.

If you are a developer wanting contribute an enhancement, bugfix or other patch to this project, please fork this repository and submit a pull request detailing your changes. I review all PRs!

This open source project is released under the MIT license which means if you would like to use this project's code in your own project you are free to do so. Speaking of, if you have used Phactor in a cool new project I would like to hear about it!

License

  Copyright (c) 2015-2025 Rich Morgan

  The MIT License (MIT)

  Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
  this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
  the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
  use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of
  the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so,
  subject to the following conditions:

  The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
  copies or substantial portions of the Software.

  THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
  IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS
  FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR
  COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER
  IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
  CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.