Tutorials:Cryptography

Cryptography

Cryptocurrency is a technology based on cryptography. Understanding a few basic concepts of cryptography will help you understand the language and principles used in the crypto space.

Symmetric Cryptography

The oldest use of cryptography is to send messages between two parties in a way that only the sender and the receiver can understand. For this system to work, the sender and receiver must agree on a key—a set of rules used to substitute the letters of the message with other symbols that only they know. Because the same Key is used to encrypt and decrypt the message it is called Symmetrical.

The sender and receiver have to agree before hand in the key used for encryption.

The sender:

 * Takes the original message.
 * Applies the rules defined by the key to transform the original message into an unintelligible form (this process is called encryption).

The encrypted message:

 * Can be delivered over any channel, even public networks.
 * Cannot be deciphered by anyone who doesn’t have the key.

The receiver:

 * Uses the same key to convert the encrypted message back into its original form (this process is called decryption).

Cryptography in Cryptocurrency

Symmetric cryptography requires the sender and receiver to share the key before exchanging messages.

Cryptocurrency uses a different type of cryptography called Asymmetric Cryptography, which does not require the sender and receiver to agree on or share a key beforehand.

This innovation enables secure transactions without pre-established trust between the parties.