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Mastering Blockchain - Fourth Edition

You're reading from  Mastering Blockchain - Fourth Edition

Product type Book
Published in Mar 2023
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781803241067
Pages 818 pages
Edition 4th Edition
Languages
Concepts
Author (1):
Imran Bashir Imran Bashir
Profile icon Imran Bashir
Toc

Table of Contents (24) Chapters close

Preface 1. Blockchain 101 2. Decentralization 3. Symmetric Cryptography 4. Asymmetric Cryptography 5. Consensus Algorithms 6. Bitcoin Architecture 7. Bitcoin in Practice 8. Smart Contracts 9. Ethereum Architecture 10. Ethereum in Practice 11. Tools, Languages, and Frameworks for Ethereum Developers 12. Web3 Development Using Ethereum 13. The Merge and Beyond 14. Hyperledger 15. Tokenization 16. Enterprise Blockchain 17. Scalability 18. Blockchain Privacy 19. Blockchain Security 20. Decentralized Identity 21. Decentralized Finance 22. Blockchain Applications and What’s Next 23. Index

Cryptographic keys

On the Bitcoin network, possession of Bitcoins and the transfer of value via transactions are reliant upon private keys, public keys, and addresses. Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) is used to generate public and private key pairs in the Bitcoin network. We have already covered these concepts in Chapter 4, Public Key Cryptography, and here we will see how private and public keys are used in the Bitcoin network.

Private keys in Bitcoin

Private keys are required to be kept safe and normally reside only on the owner's side. Private keys are used to digitally sign the transactions, proving ownership of the bitcoins.

Private keys are fundamentally 256-bit numbers randomly chosen in the range specified by the SECP256K1 ECDSA curve recommendation. Any randomly chosen 256-bit number from 0x1 to 0xFFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFE BAAE DCE6 AF48 A03B BFD2 5E8C D036 4140 is a valid private key.

Private keys are usually encoded using Wallet Import Format (WIF) in...

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