Steemit Crypto Academy Contest / S1W3 – Blockchain through the concepts by @jamezmccoy

Source

Tell us about your favorite concept or term related to blockchain, try to be explanatory and make sure to give your opinion. (For example: Decentralized, Genesis Block, Hard Fork, Proof of Stake.)

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CRYPTOGRAPHY

Most people in the blockchain world who have in-depth knowledge of the ins and out of their blockchain are mostly familiar with the terminology “CRYTOGRAPHY” and its very important to know this concept if you are keen on knowing how your crypto currencies are secured.

Cryptography is simply a term used to accurately define the art of protecting data or communication especially in the presence of malicious intent or hackers, cryptography is also correctly described as an act of securing data in such a way that only the sender and the receiver can interpret or read such message. In a much more simpler term we could say cryptography is simply an act of encrypting plain text or converting plain text to ciphertext.
Cryptography often involves the sender encrypting his data using the receiver's public key and the receiver using his private key to decrypt the data and acknowledging the information. It will take a computer at the very least 50 Years plus to be able to correctly guess or break encrypted data using brute force cause the computer is consistently going to be guessing and applying all sorts of keys and by mathematical calculations, in some cases, this encryption may take more a 100 years before a supercomputer can correctly crack this encryption by brute force
Every participant in a blockchain is often accessing the blockchain via his node with some specific digital signature, keys are given to users I.e public key which individuals can share and receive coins and is also generated by the private key and the private key which provides a medium via which individuals can access their assets.
Cryptography works in such an easy for for instance Now let's say for instance Z wants to send sensitive information in plain text to Y his friend from work through a third party medium,Z would have to, first of all, encrypt his sensitive data from plain text to ciphertext using a key, now going through third party channels any interception to read the message would be a waste of efforts assuming only both the sender and receiver have the keys. The receiver Y would use a decryption key to decrypt the ciphertext and convert it back to a normal text

TYPES OF CRYPTOGRAPHY

• PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY
• SECRET/PRIVATE KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY

PUBLIC KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY

Public key cryptography is a type of cryptography that uses two different types of keys i.e a public and private key which are mathematically linked together, here the public key is used to encrypt the data and only the matching private key can be used to decrypt the data. We could liken Public-key Cryptography to an Asymmetric cryptography

PRIVATE KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY

Private key cryptography is an alphanumeric text that should be kept as the name implies private by a user, the private key cryptography uses one key to both encrypt and decrypt data and for that specific reason, it is seen to be faster than public-key cryptography., private key cryptography is used in blockchains to access assets and decrypt transactions.

Why do you think it is important in the blockchain?

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IDENTIFICATION/AUTHENTICATION

As most of us already know in cryptography each individual holding carrying out an activity that requires cryptography has a form of digital signature one’s signature is attached to the private key of the sender while the other has a digital signature contained in the public key of the recipient, this implies that the users identification is consigned to the activity and only the intended user can actually make sense out of the message or transaction

SECURITY

In cryptography if a users encrypts a transaction using his private key and a middle man Intercepts the transaction with malicious attempt it will take at least 100 years to break the encryption using brute force without either of the keys. So on a long run the cryptography helps ensure your messages/transaction are secured and can only be read by the receiver with the public key

Do you think that the existence of the blockchain would be possible without this concept? Is there an alternative or similar term?

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The cryptography was an essential factor to the existence of blockchain, the need for security when a transaction is dispensed is of utmost importance, the cryptography digital signature was an essential aspect in the existence and successful outcome of the blockchain. We can see bitcoin for instance although it publishes most of its transaction to the public so the privacy aspect was not really put into much use in the first blockchain but the digital signature feature of the cryptography was a fundamental piece
When a transaction is about to be dispatched in the blockchain a form of proof that the user is the one dispensing such a transaction is required i.e private key and a recipient address that is the public key is also required and this has been the how it was since the start implying that blockchain has taken advantage of cryptography right from day one.
Blockchain also uses cryptography hash functions to generate addresses in such a way that each hash or key is unique and can’t be compromised, the blockchain uses these hash functions to connect one block to another like we can see in the example of the merkle tree, any alteration of any of the hash in the block will render the block useless. This features have been in the blockchain right from time so no without this features presented by cryptography the blockchain wouldn’t exist even if it did it would not be as secure as it is right now

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Do you think it is possible to improve this term in some way? Explain us how

After hours of research I see no loops or weak links in the cryptography used by blockchain i.e Secure hash algorithms 256 e.t.c how safe your nose in the blockchain is, is completely up to how well the user protects his keys. If the Cryptographic method used by blockchain needed improvement it would have been worked on already.

CONCLUSION

Cryptography is the basis or one of the foundations upon which the blockchain world stands on as most of the major features on the blockchain activities such as the Generation of public keys and assigning of the private keys.