Cryptography
The most popular use of blockchain is to create cryptocurrency. As the word crypto is in cryptocurrency, you would expect that you need to master cryptography to become a blockchain programmer. That isn’t true. You only need to know two things about cryptography:
- Private keys and public keys (asymmetric cryptography)
- Hashing
We explained these previously. You don’t need to know how to design a hashing algorithm or private key and public key algorithm. You only need to get an intuitive understanding of how they work and the implications of these technologies.
Private keys and public keys enable decentralized accounts. In a normal application, you have a username and password. These two fields enable someone to access their account. However, having a private key and a public key enables someone to have an account in a decentralized manner.
For hashing, it is a one-way function, meaning that given an input, you can get the output easily...
