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Cryptographic Hash

Cryptographic hash functions play the critical role in providing the foundations of trust in systems that are completely neutral and resistant to censorship or bribes.

Cryptographic hash functions create a unique, fixed-size representation of an input regardless of its size, therefore enabling blockchains and smart contracts to store an input as a hash output to save space.

Properties​

Cryptographic hash functions must have five specific properties

  • Deterministic
  • Pseudorandom
  • One-way
  • Fast to Compute
  • Collision-resistant

Online SHA256 Tool

Deterministic​

One specific input always maps to the same specific output

Pseudorandom​

It is not possible to guess the output based on the output of similar inputs

One-way​

If someone gives you a new output, you could not determine an input without guessing

Fast to Compute​

It must be a quick calculation for a computer

Collision-resistant​

The chance of a collision should be impossibly small