base32 as the human-readable base: %CgGEJ0V...

i also appreciate what @keks is saying in general: humans should not be an after-thought of the protocol, i don't think the success of Scuttlebutt will ever be from how we enable machines to interface with each other, it will come from how we enable humans to use machines to interface with each other, more human accessibility is worth a less efficient machine protocol.