This chapter will cover all the basics of cryptography that are required for you to understand the vital role it plays in blockchain technology. We will delve deeply into all the aspects of cryptography that blockchain relies on. We will explain a few concepts in practical terms so that we can implement them with ease in later chapters. These include the following:
- Cryptography in blockchain
- Classical cryptography
- Cryptographic primitives
- Merkle trees
- Encoding schemes
Modern cryptography is the study of private or secure communication. The fundamental objective of cryptography is to enable two people to communicate over an unsecure medium. This is achieved by encrypting a plaintext from the sender to form a ciphertext that can only be decrypted by the receiver, with whom the sender shares a secret. However, third parties can access the channel by which...