Blockchain and Cyptography
Blockchain technology utilizes cryptography as a means of ensuring transactions are done safely, while securing all information and storages of value. Therefore, anyone using blockchain can have complete confidence that once something is recorded on a blockchain, it is done so legitimately and in a manner that preserves security.
Despite being founded upon a similar framework, the type of cryptography used in blockchain, namely public-key cryptography, is considerably better suited to the functions associated with the technology than symmetric-key cryptography.
Blockchain technology is new, that’s true, but while blockchain itself may be new and cutting-edge, it’s built out of nothing more than very old technology.
And one of those is cryptography.
The word cryptography has been used a lot lately, and many people think it’s a very new cutting-edge science.
But even though there are new developments being made everyday, cryptography itself is a very old science.
One really good and old example of this is the story of Rose O’Neal Greenhow (Wikipedia has a really good explanation of who she was).
The short story is that Rose Greenhow lived in the Washington DC area during the American Civil War, and she was actually an undercover spy for the Confederate Army.
She used to have many fancy parties, and was also invited to many high-end social events. Usually these events were attended by members of the Union Army, generals, strategists, etc.
In secret, at all these events she was soaking up all the information she could.
She developed her own encryption scheme and she used this scheme to mail letters to the Confederate Army, revealing the plans of the Union Army, troop positions, general strategy, etc.
This is one of the first examples of cryptography.
All of this to say, when you think about blockchain and all the new cutting-edge things that it’s doing, don’t forget that it has its roots in very old technology, and it is built up of just a combination of old technology in a new and creative way.
Now, let’s go back on cryptography and how it works!
Blockchain provides users with data integrity in a trustless environment, and this is accomplished using cryptography in a way that moves the burden of trust from data processors and third parties to cryptographic algorithms.
There are few key terms used in cryptography, let’s list them out and try to explain them:
- Secret: Is the data we are trying to protect.
- Key: It is a piece of data used for encrypting and decrypting the secret.
- Function: It is the particular function used to encrypt the secret
- Cipher: This is the encrypted secret data, basically the output of the function.
How do all of them work together?
Well in few words: The Secret and the Key are passed into the Function to create the Cipher.
