Cryptographic Hash
Cryptography plays the critical role in providing the foundations of trust in systems that are 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 to store an input as a hash output to save space. Cryptographic hash functions must have five specific properties:
- 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
Merkle Trees
Merkle trees are a data structure that allows for the efficient verification of the contents of a large dataset. They are used in blockchains to store the transactions in a block and provide a way to verify the integrity of the data. Learn more...
Zero Knowledge
Zero-knowledge proofs are a cryptographic method that allows one party to prove to another that they know a specific piece of information without revealing what that information is. This is useful in blockchain technology to verify the integrity of data without revealing the data itself. Learn more...