Key Concepts of the Blockchain

Public, Private Keys & Addresses

• The most critical concept of the blockchain is the Key, the key in the cryptographic world is a string of secure alphanumeric characters which helps you secure data through encryption.

Illustration of Key Generation

How are the Keys Generated?

There are two types of key generation algorithms, they are symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic algorithms.

• Symmetric cryptography algorithms generates only one key shared to users encrypt or decrypt the data,
• Symmetric algorithms are faster than asymmetric algorithms but the initial key distribution is a problem.

Key Generation in Symmetric Cryptography Algorithms

Examples of Symmetric cryptographic algorithms are:

• AES algorithms (used in) — — > TLS services (Transport Layer Services)

**AES = Advanced Encryption Standard**

• RC4 algorithms (used in) — → Wireless encryption services (Transport Layer Services)

RC4 is fast but has many vulnerabilities.

The second way to generate keys is through Asymmetric cryptography algorithms, where a pair of keys are created.

• The first key of the pair is the private key, derived from a logic computation and the second key generated is the public key is derived from the private key.
• Users sending data (transactions) can use a private key to encrypt their data, while users receiving the data can view the data using the public key

Key Generation in Asymmetric Cryptography Algorithms

It is important to note that, Asymmetric algorithms are a one way algorithm where you can derive the public key from the private key but vice versa it is not possible.

• Asymmetric algorithms are slower than Symmetric algorithms, also generating a larger key size affects the performance and this .

Therefore, It is important to balance out performance and security when using key generation algorithms.

Examples of Asymmetric cryptographic algorithms are:

• RSA algorithms (used in) — → Accessing servers in cloud computing
• ECC algorithms (used in) — → Blockchain

**ECC stands for Elliptic Curve Cryptography**

In Blockchain, ECC algorithms are used for key generation because it is more secure than other methods.

• In ECC algorithms the private key is not used directly, rather it undergoes certain transformations and base conversions to make it more suitable for blockchain.
• When applying ECC conversions a shorter format known as wallet import format is often used.

The ECC algorithm offers advantages over other encryption methods because it is more concise and includes built in error checking codes for development

• The wallet import format is more concise and also uses uniquely created bits within the code
• In ECC algorithms, the Hash values and checksum data are converted to an alphanumeric representation using a custom scheme to create a blockchain address (which act like email addresses)

** Private Keys: They are required in the blockchain to generate a unique signature for each transaction on the blockchain**

• The generated signature can then be used for verification and validation of a transaction

Simply, private keys are used to sign and verify user transactions on the block chain.