pair.encodePkcs8() not interoperable about common HOT 3 OPEN

On the other hand, the I cannot locate the implementation of the function, as this has been imported from WASM, and I cannot review what it actually does. I cannot find a function with that name neither in Substrate or Polkadot repositories.

Anybody knows where is encodePkcs8 implemented?

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It is not a Polkadot/Substrate standard. It is purely a Polkadot Js function used to encode the keyring for internal usage and storage. It is always assumed that anything encoded with this will be decoded with the same (reverse) function.

As such there is no appetite to change it since -

1. This would require a Polkadot JS ecosystem-wide upgrade to ensure that keypairs can be shared (an upgrade is planned for version 3 -> 4, but it will drop the current encoding format completely - obviously catering for old decoding as well, just new default encoding would be 4, not pkcs8-like, but rather different)
2. It is an internal keyring function (obviously some people may have use for it elsewhere, in that case the limitiations needs to be kept in mind)

The Polkadot JS-specific encoding is handled here - https://github.com/polkadot-js/common/tree/master/packages/util-crypto/src/json

from common.

@jacogr Thanks, I can see where the issue may be coming from. It could be that the header used is actually for an RSA key, I will dig deeper.

As such there is no appetite to change it since ...

Well, at least we should add documentation if it turns out that PKCS8 is actually not PKCS8. Also I believe that adding an `encodeStandardPkcs8' would definitely not hurt. Even better and less confusing would be to add encodePEM() as implemented as Standard PKCS8 in PEM format, and ensuring interoperability at least with NodeJS crypto packages and OpenSSL.

ensure that keypairs can be shared (an upgrade is planned for version 3 -> 4

We are specifically looking into key interoperability as part of DINFRA project, which is in the Web3 Grants program. We are going to be attempting key interoperability with a number of other opensource projects, so we are happy contribute to this.

We are happy to participate in selecting which format/s would be nice to have for best interoperability.

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