Public & Private Keys & Transaction Signatures

Keys and Signatures, sound very musical right? Well, these two features in a blockchain make your encrypted data sing, so there’s that!

In cryptography, each individual has a pair of 2 keys: a public and a private one.

A public key is a cryptographic key that is used to encrypt a message that can only be decrypted by the intended receiver with their private key. Also called the secret key, the private key asset is only owned by the individual and cannot be shared with another member.

Asymmetric encryption revolves around the use of these two keys to achieve two goals:

• To establish confidentiality: the message encrypted by the receiver’s public key and only be decrypted by their private key. This ensures that nobody else along the way can gauge the exchange or transaction that’s taking place between the two parties.
• To substantiate credibility: A message encrypted by the sender’s private key can only be decrypted by their public key. This proves that the source of encryption has remained untouched through the process of delivery and even though the message or the details can be viewed by members other than the receiver, the identity of the sender is protected and authenticated, eliminating fraud or misplacement of information.

Asymmetric encryption is typically used in software programs that need another layer of secure connection over an existing insecure network, that need to validate a digital signature. A digital signature is a mathematically oriented technique used to authenticate data, much like a stamped seal or a handwritten signature.?

While Asymmetric encryption has many benefits, there’s two sides to every key (pun intended).The process is very gradual, borderline slow, as compared to symmetric encryption, and so proves to be a hassle when decrypting bulk messages

The loss of one’s private key will technically be the loss of all data because there’s no possible way yet to retrieve it, unless someone else has the exact same private key, which is never the case. While private keys are irreplaceable assets, public keys aren’t even authenticated, making it highly problematic to ensure who it belongs to without verification.

In conclusion, there’s always scope for growth and although no algorithm is done down to perfection, asymmetric encryption is close to it if you want to transmit small chunks of data to a large audience securely.